Digital Libraries Across Cultures: Design and Usability Issues
Outcomes of the “Cross-Cultural Usability for Digital Libraries” workshop at JCDL ‘03

Nadia Caidi

Anita Komlodi

Faculty of Information Studies

Department of Information Systems

University of Toronto

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Toronto, ON M5S 3G6, Canada

Baltimore, MD 21250

caidi@fis.utoronto.ca

komlodi@umbc.edu

Digital libraries (DL) are increasingly broader in scope and reach, spanning geographicaland cultural boundaries. Yet little research is available on the influence of culture as it
pertains to the design and use of digital libraries. To address these considerations, aworkshop was organized at Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2003, the aimof which was to bring together researchers and practitioners (twelve participantsaltogether) from a variety of disciplines to present current projects and contribute to acollaborative research agenda. The goals of the workshop were: 1) to increase awarenessabout the area of cross-cultural usability in the digital library community; 2) to identify
new tools, techniques and methodologies for cross-cultural study of user behavior in DLs
and international user interface design; 3) to provide a forum for generating new research
directions and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
The workshop started with presentations by the authors on the concept of ‘culture’, crosscultural usability issues for digital libraries, and studies of information-seeking behavior
across cultures. The discussions that ensued established a roadmap for research in thearea of cross-cultural design for digital libraries. Two areas were identified:
1. Digital libraries and the preservation of cultural heritage
The advent of digitization has transformed what it means to acquire, control, deliver, anduse information resources in society. Individuals, institutions and communities are able topublish and disseminate information about their cultural heritage and create their own
digital libraries, which increases the potential for diversity, plurality of voices andempowerment of these communities. These developments raise new and challenging
issues around the re-presentation of the vast collections of human culture in digital forms:• Who are the end-users of these DLs and what are their needs?
• Whose culture is re-presented online (e.g., biases in content selection,inclusion/exclusion of voices, self identification vs. perception by others)?
• How possible is it to digitally ‘backup’ a culture? Is it desirable? (implicationsand dangers of objectifying culture; representation of experiences)• Changing culture – changing collections (how to provide for natural growth andcommunity building?)• Access vs. ownership issues over digital cultural heritage (licensing, intellectualproperty, infrastructure availability, literacy skills, etc.)• Implications for information institutions (e.g., libraries, archives and museums) interms of organization and management of digital content.
Culture is a complex and shifty notion that is very hard to operationalize in practice. The
workshop participants called for more research to be undertaken on defining culture in
the context of information processing and management, as a means to assess whether andto what extent culture can be considered a design variable in the construction of DLs.
2. Cross-Cultural Usability of Digital Libraries
Cross-cultural usability is concerned with the usability and comprehensibility of userinterfaces by users from different cultural backgrounds. Cross-cultural usability issues
have been explored in the area of human-computer interaction; design guidelines havebeen created, design and evaluation methodologies have been devised to implement
cross-cultural and international user interfaces [1, 2]. The user population of DLs is often
just as international as those of globally marketed software products or Websites.
Designing for culturally diverse users is a challenge that deserves more attention whencreating DL resources.
The workshop discussed many question related to cross-cultural usability and participants
agreed that more research is needed in the field. Especially important are behavior studies
of culturally diverse user groups of information resources. These studies can form thebasis for culturally sensitive design for DLs. The following research directions wereidentified:• To what extent does culture (national, organizational, domain) impact information
seeking and use? Do cross-cultural studies of behavior lead to design guidelines,decisions? How is ‘usability’ defined in this context?(i.e., performance,satisfaction)• Culture is mediated by many factors (contextual, individual, etc.) which affectinformation use. How do these change the effect of cultural background on
information use?
• What methods are best to use to study cross-cultural differences in information
seeking? Methodological issues: combined approach of quantitative andqualitative methods; asking the appropriate questions to determine a user’s
cultural belonging, etc.
• What design dimensions should we consider for DLs? Do general user interface
design dimensions (language, images, content organization, etc.) translate to DLs?
What new dimensions (e.g., relevance, interactivity, involvement, community,novelty, etc.) do we need to consider?
One clear outcome of the workshop was the strong need for research on cross-culturalissues in the design and implementation of DLs (e.g., through case studies of userinterface design for diverse user groups, comparative studies of information seekers). It is
the intent of the organizers to publish the results of the workshop and invite the DL
community to include cross-cultural issues and concerns into its research agenda.

For more information, visit: http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/faculty/caidi/JCDL03.html
References:
1. Del Galdo, Elisa; Nielsen, Jakob (eds.). (1996) International user interfaces. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, NY. p. 276.
2. Fernandes, Tony. (1995) Global interface design: A guide to designinginternational user interfaces. AP Professional, Boston, MA. p. 191.