DBIS User workshop - Report
Creators: name: Moßburger, Luis
name: Riedl, Felix
name: Doß, Brigitte
Publisher: name: Universität Regensburg
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: 020 Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft

description: Methodology: 
On Feb. 2, 2021, a six-hour virtual workshop with representatives of individual user libraries was conducted, in order to elicit user requirements to be considered in the further development of the database information system (“DBIS”). The following section describes the goals, structure, and participants of the workshop.

Aim of the action:
As stated in the DFG application, the user workshop should include as diverse and numerous requirements as possible from the user community. These should be used later, initially without evaluation, prioritization, or assessment of feasibility, as input for a collected catalog of requirements. On the one hand, a revision of the previous implementation should take place during the measure and current deficiencies of the current system should be discovered. On the other hand, previously unknown requirements that had not been voiced in the previous years of operation were to be explored. Last but not least, conceptual proposals for meeting these requirements were to be developed together with the representatives of the user institutions.

Concept:
In the workshop, moderated small groups with representatives of the user institutions were to discuss different facets of DBIS. The topics were only roughly specified and the associated questions were formulated as openly as possible to allow sufficient self-determination on the part of the participants. The moderation was done by one DBIS project member per group and was kept informal in order to give the participants enough leeway. Scenarios for intervention were, if necessary, only the strong digression of the discussion, its hijacking by frequent speakers, or the abatement of the discussion. For the latter case, the moderators were equipped with prepared moderation cards with which they could gently steer the discussion to points relevant to the project. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop could only take place as a virtual event. For this purpose, the teleconferencing system "Zoom" and the digital flipchart "Conceptboard" were used.

Participants:
In order to reflect as broad a spectrum of opinions and needs as possible in the participants, care was taken to ensure a diverse composition. For example, representatives from different types of libraries (e.g. state libraries, special libraries, university libraries) or countries of origin (e.g. Germany, Austria, or Switzerland) were invited to participate. The mapping of licenses of the specialized information services for research (“FID”) described in the proposal for the German Research Foundation FID was considered in the participants’ ("PA") circle by inviting several representatives from the Competence Center for Licensing (“KfL”) as well as another representative from a FID institution. Initially, a request for volunteers for the workshop was posted via the user libraries’ mailing list. Thirty-one volunteers came forward, from which 15 PAs were selected by the DBIS team. Care has been taken to ensure a diverse distribution of PAs in order to cover as many different perspectives and aspects on the topic as possible. Before the workshop, two participants had to withdraw their participation. They have been replaced by suitable volunteers. The KfL has been contacted directly, offering them the participation of one or more persons. From the KfL, 3 participants joined the workshop.

Topic selection:
Candidates of the topics to be discussed were primarily extracted from the DFG application. Likewise, the functional catalog of the existing solution was consulted as well as documents with desiderata collected so far. Last but not least, support emails with reported problems and the previous experiences of the DBIS team members were considered. In a joint discussion of the DBIS team, topics irrelevant to the workshop were first identified and removed from the topic list. The remaining issues were grouped by the team into three categories and the four issues with the highest relevance were selected from each category. For each of the 12 topics, a question was defined for discussion by a working group. In the case of very abstract questions, additional information such as examples has been added to clarify the question for the participants. In advance, the team determined which participants were most qualified to answer which question. Small groups were formed that would represent as many different perspectives as possible on the issues discussed. The assignment of topics and groups was sent to the participants several weeks before the workshop together with the schedule via e-mail. Last but not least, participants were also allowed to contribute their own interests in a dedicated topic block at the end of the workshop.

Procedure:
The workshop was started with a short welcome session and presentations on the purpose of the activity. Afterward, the participants were given an introduction to "Conceptboard", a digitally shared flipchart on which the collaborative group work was conducted. In a short warm-up session, PAs were able to gain experience with the tool as well as get into a creative and open mindset. Subsequently, in three 45-minute topic blocks, each group worked on a specific overarching topic. In parallel small group work with four participants and a moderator, one facet of this main topic was discussed for 30 minutes and the results were recorded on virtual post-its in the “Conceptboard”. In the plenary follow-up session, each group presented the most essential results of their work in a short, approximately three-minute presentation. Due to time constraints, it was not possible to have an open discussion about the results; instead, the PAs were encouraged to add their opinions and supplementary points via the comment function on the charts of the other discussion groups.
During the workshop, PAs were allowed to record their own ideas for discussion on an "idea zone." After the three thematically predefined task blocks, the topics with the highest relevance were jointly determined by assigning points and handled in an open discussion block methodically analogous to the preassigned topic blocks. Finally, a short presentation gave the participants an outlook on the future work on the workshop results, and the participants were bid farewell. In addition to a confirmation of participation, the participants also received a full print of the digital flipcharts. In the community, an anonymized print of the concept board was shared to give people who had not been given the opportunity to participate a chance to contribute their opinions.

Evaluation:
The statements on the digital flipcharts were extracted, contained concepts were coded and clustered by members of the project team in a remote card sorting session. The thematic clusters provided the structure for this outcome document. Please note, that all citations have been translated correspondingly for improved readability. For accessing original citations, please refer to the German original document.