Digital library use (panel session): social practice in design and evaluation

Digital Libraries (DLs) are social as well as technological entities. Their purpose is to help people do knowledge work, to carry knowledge processes across space and time. DLs are designed, used, and evaluated in a context of work and community. And DLs interact with this context, changing and being changed by it. Effective DLs must be designed and evaluated with a sensitivity to how knowledge is created and understood, and work is done, in a context of knowledge communities, which share practices and tools. DL use is a socially-embedded process. DL development is likewise a complex social process. This panel grows out of a book on social approaches to DL design and evaluation--currrently in press--to which the moderator and each panelist has contributed a chapter. The purpose of the panel is to present socially grounded approaches to understanding DLs; to identify and discuss major issues that arise from these approaches and, more generally, from the social nature of DLs; and to consider implications for the design and evaluation of DLs.