Digital Libraries Evaluation: Case Study of World Digital Library

Research Abstract

With the advent of digital libraries, they need to be evaluated, as evaluation research activity has an impact theoretical and practical. The objective of the evaluation of digital libraries is making sure of if the digital libraries achieve their primary and secondary objectives and try to produce development proposals. It is worth that there is no standard evaluation criteria and evaluation techniques for digital libraries, the researches of evaluating digital libraries were in several ways as: evaluation of digital libraries in general and the evaluation criteria, evaluation of digital libraries specifically and the application of evaluation criteria such as usability studies, usability, evaluation studies on the other subjects. Despite the availability of many studies about the specific challenges for evaluating digital libraries, but there are a small number of studies dealing with evaluation of digital libraries in general, and these standards are derived from the criteria for evaluating traditional libraries, and the interaction of the human element with the computer, and performance system of information retrieval and digital technology. The digital libraries are an extension of traditional libraries. The World Digital Library is a Digital Library established with the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in collaboration with the Library of Congress. The Library announced that its mission is to promote international understanding and education for the exchange of cultures online. So its evaluation is required with the completion of the establishment of the library and made it available to users, to know their strengths and overcome weaknesses in an attempt to develop and access to the highest levels of management and service. Therefore, the study aims to introduce what is digital libraries in terms of the its beginning, development and its different definitions, study the early stages of evaluation of digital libraries and analysis some reseraches of the evaluation of digital libraries, define the world digital library and its evolution, and at the end study some of the criteria for evaluating digital libraries and try to gain access to specifications for evaluating digital library. Therefore, the study used the historical approach: to study the beginnings of the digital library and digital libraries evaluations and World Digital Libraries and their evolutions. The Case Study approach: to describe the World Digital Library: its definition, development and analysis of its evaluation elements, to put findings and recommendations suitable for the evaluation of Arabic Digital Library, were also analyzed some previous studies on the evaluation of digital libraries to quote the suitable criteria and apply it on the World Digital Library. The study relied on the documentary search tool: to collect the theoretical aspect of the study which relates to Digital Library in general and its development, evaluation of digital libraries and the development of the World Digital Library, and the second tool is interactive sailing: browse and serach the site of the World Digital Library and access the requierd information for the assessment. The third tool is a checklist which was quoted from previous study and it was designed according to the elements of World Digital Library evaluation, which includes (12) standard for evaluating digital library. This study has many results and the most important is that the total weight of criteria points for evaluating the WDL has arrived (47.5) of the total 119 points, as it achieves standards of open source Digital Library by (39.9%), meaning that the library did not achieve half of the criteria required to evaluate the digital library, which requires reconsideration in weaknesses and try to overcome them to reach the highest degree of services and quality. And One of the main recommendations of the study is the need for a sophisticated search capabilities include Boolean Search, root of the word search, search the Web site and metadata search and other types of advanced search to improve the possibility of retrieving the required information and accuracy.

Research Keywords

Digital Library, Evaluation, Digital Library Evaluation, World Digital Library Evaluation.