DELOS Workshop on the Evaluation of Digital Libraries
Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Via Gradenigo 6/a, 35131 Padova, Italy
October 4-5, 2004

- All presentations are now available in PDF format -

Digital libraries are destined to become an essential part of the information infrastructure in the 21st century. Given the rapid development in this field, there is an increasing need for evaluations in order to determine the usefulness, usability and economics of digital libraries. However, there is a lack of appropriate evaluation methodologies. This workshop will target at a survey on the state of the art in DL evaluation, and will identify major issues for further research in the area of DL evaluation.

Specifically, this workshop will try to find answers to the following questions:
- Why are DLs evaluated?
- What are standard approaches for DL evaluation?
- Which aspects/components are evaluated in these approaches?
-- collections, users, usage, systems
-- content, community, services, technology
-- societies, scenarios, spaces, structures, streams
- Which evaluation criteria are used in these approaches?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches?
- What should be done (in the future) in DL evaluation?

In addition, two general issues are to be addressed:
- What is an appropriate conceptual DL model to which evaluation could refer to ?
- Are there conceptual frameworks for evaluation?

As a result of the workshop, a white paper will be prepared, giving a brief survey over the state of the art in DL evaluation, as well as a description of open research issues in this area.

Participation in the workshop will be by invitation only.
Get the list of participants in pdf format.