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Assessing the Need for a Natural Resources Digital
Library
Janine Salwasser
Natural Resources Consultant
Oregon State University Libraries
janine.salwasser@orst.edu
Catherine Murray-Rust
Associate University Librarian
Oregon State University Libraries
catherine.murray-rust@orst.edu
Abstract
To guide the design, content, and development of a natural
resources digital library, the Oregon State University Libraries
commissioned a needs assessment. Interviews with citizens, policy makers,
and scientists show that potential users want to quickly find, retrieve,
integrate, and synthesize well organized and geo-referenced information on
Oregon's natural resources, and they welcome the library's intent to
develop such an information resource.
Introduction
Rich and abundant natural resources shape the quality of life Oregonians
enjoy, but population pressure, growing demand for water, concerns about
deteriorating environmental health and declining native species place this
quality of life in jeopardy. Citizens, government officials, and
scientists are calling for more and more changes in natural resources
policy, management, business practices, and research. To inform
decision-making and environmental stewardship, planners and policy-makers
must have access to high quality, timely information resources.
Oregon's State of the Environment Report (Oregon Progress
Board 2000) notes that essential data, maps, and information on
natural resources are largely inaccessible, unusable or non-existent.
Building on its land-grant mission and commitment to creating information
resources that reflect the research strengths of Oregon State University,
library administration decided to create a natural resources digital
library to remedy the situation. The first step was to commission a needs
assessment.
The overall goal of the needs assessment was to determine whether
information needs are being met, and if not, what should be done to
provide an accessible and understandable digital library. The assessment
focused on two fundamental questions: (1) By providing better access to
existing natural resources information through a digital library will
users be able to make informed decisions about natural resources policy
and practice? And (2) When information is accessed, can it be understood?
The intended audience for the digital library includes policy makers,
scientists, educators, community groups, and citizens; potential users
from academia, business, conservation groups, environmental consulting
groups, extension services, government agencies, and watershed councils
were targeted for interviews.
Background
Reports on needs assessments conducted prior to creating digital libraries
-- at the "needs analysis, wants identification, and
ideas-about-what-to-build-stages" (
National Research Council
1998) are rare in the literature. Evaluation of designs and content
for digital libraries appear more often, but they too are scarce. Although
many researchers call for involving stakeholders early and at all stages
of development, the common approach is "build it and they will come."
Hesitation about asking users in advance of creating a digital library
seems to be based on the idea that people have trouble describing what
they have never seen or used. This can lead to assessments that focus on
needs expressed by articulate providers of information and not the users
of information.
In an extensive review (in press) of assessing needs and
impact of digital libraries, Marchionini, Plaisant, and Komlodi, note that
the "fundamental goal of needs assessment is to identify large numbers of
specific needs and map these unique needs into common classes of needs
that may be met with standardized procedures. A related goal is to
assist/guide people in mapping their personal needs into systems supported
tasks." They conducted a multi-faceted needs assessment of current and
potential users of Library of Congress' National Digital Library through
reading room visits, interviews, and questionnaires.
Projects notable for extensive user needs assessment and evaluation are
the Alexandria Digital Library Project (Hill et al. 1997)
and the Adaptive Management Portal Project (USDA Forest
Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in progress). In 1996, the
user needs analysis team for the Alexandria Digital Library focused on
what use earth scientists, information specialists, and educators would
make of a digital library if it met all their needs. Through target user
group meetings, the project developed clear sets of expectations from the
different user groups. The Adaptive Management Portal Project staff has
interviewed groups of information providers and users in different
geographic locales since Spring 2000. Results from phase 1 of their
assessment are available online. Technical, organizational, semantic and
business aspects of the information management system and process needs
and desires are being explored.
In 1998, the Archaeology Data Service at the University of York in the
United Kingdom was commissioned to study the creation, archiving, use, and
re-use of digital data (Condron et al. 1999). The
findings show that archaeologists want access to large quantities of
varied kinds of information to incorporate into all aspects of their work.
They also want this information to be free of charge.
In the planning documents for a grant-funded study of users of image
collections, researchers at Penn State University Libraries plan to build
on the techniques used in new product development in the commercial sector
(Pisciotta et al. 2001). They will use a number of user
perception measures including surveys and interviews to learn about the
needs of teachers, students, and collection managers.
Assessment Design
Oregon State University Libraries' needs assessment began with interviews
of key contacts in natural resources fields. It progressed to formal
interviews of a variety of potential users, a workshop, and a plan for
future projects.
Pre-assessment
Prior to the formal assessment, a pre-assessment involved meetings with 37
key contacts. Key contacts are providers of information, developers of
information systems, and/or people who supervise or provide outreach to
individuals who are users of information (e.g., academic deans).
Conversations with these key contacts assisted with project design and
selection of users, served to informally build a constituency for the
digital library, and created a network of people who are interested in the
outcome of the needs assessment and can advise on the current and future
direction of the digital library.
User profile
Thirty-five individuals representing academia, business, conservation
groups, environmental consulting groups, extension services, government
agencies, and watershed councils were selected for interview. All the
interviewees represented users of natural resources information. The top
three primary uses for information were: research (26%), education (23%),
and policy (20%). Other use categories were planning, coordination,
outreach, and assessment.
Identification of questions
Eleven questions were carefully chosen to fit into an hour interview (
Appendix). The University's Survey Research Center
provided helpful assistance with the design of survey to ensure an
objective and meaningful outcome. Interviewees were asked where they
currently get their natural resources information, how they use the
information, if information can be used off the shelf without any
modification, and what information and information services they would
like that are not currently available. The interviewer also sought to
capture respondents' vision of a digital library without influencing their
thoughts from a provider's perspective.
Face-to-face interviews (individual assessment of needs)
Face-to-face interviews were conducted over a four-month period
(March-June 2001). Interviews averaged one hour. In two cases, two people
were interviewed at the same time and these interviews lasted 1.5 hours.
Interviews were not tape recorded, but extensive notes were taken and
compiled in a spreadsheet for later evaluation. Interviewees had an
opportunity to review their response for accuracy.
Workshop with users (collective assessment of user needs)
All of the individual interviews supported the need for a comprehensive
natural resources digital library. Because of the diversity of needs
expressed by users in the interviews, we decided to organize a group
discussion specifically on how to move forward. A workshop was held to
seek recommendations on the creation of a prototype, or proof of concept,
for a natural resource digital library from the collective perspective of
users and key contacts. The workshop was extremely helpful and provided
the library with a blueprint for moving forward in a way that corresponds
with user-defined needs.
Findings
The needs assessment process was intentionally designed with open-ended
questions to facilitate the most creative and non-constrained responses
from potential users. Although the interview responses were largely
qualitative, certain patterns and themes emerged that enabled a
quantitative reporting of the collective response.
Current sources for natural resources information
Users largely depend on personal in-house collections (29%), web sites
(26%), direct people contacts (20%), and agencies (20%) for their natural
resources information. A very small percentage (5%) utilizes university
library collections as their primary source of information.
Kinds of natural resources information users need
The term "natural resources" is defined broadly to include physical,
biological, social, and economic elements. Most natural resource
information is needed at a variety of spatial scales and geographic
extents, with 1:24,000 the most commonly used scale. Geographic extents
mentioned most frequently were watersheds, state, Pacific Northwest
region, ecoregion, and county. Users want to identify a place and find the
available information for that particular place.
More than 85% of potential users want more natural resource information
available to them to support their work. In particular, they expressed a
desire for basic geospatial information at 1:24,000 scale on the physical,
biological and management features in the state. Specific information
requested includes transportation, land use, habitat, vegetation, fish and
animal species, and water quality. Remote sensing data, historical
information, and projections of future land use and land cover conditions
are important. Synthesized materials in the form of maps, annotated
bibliographies, webliographies, abstracts, research results, and
successful restoration projects are also desired.
Ability to use information off the shelf
More than 90% of users are not able to take natural resources information
off the shelf and use it. Interviewees noted that the kinds of
transformations they often perform are data integration and synthesis
(e.g., combining water quantity and fish distribution data); filling in
data gaps (e.g., interpolating water temperature data where stream gauges
are not in place), and remedying temporal and spatial inconsistencies
(e.g., evaluating historical and future forest conditions when the
information is collected in different ways across the state). In order to
perform these transformations, high quality metadata is crucial.
Natural resource collection(s) of greatest value today
The interviewees identified three high priority natural resource thematic
areas: watersheds, land and water use, and forestry. Examples of the type
of questions users currently ask about these themes are:
- What are the fish species and their distribution in a particular
watershed?
- What is the history behind Klamath River Basin water allocation
conflicts?
- What will the future species mix and forest structure be in Oregon's
Coast Range?
The consensus is that these three kinds of content themes are not mutually
exclusive, and information can be made available on aspects of these three
themes at a variety of spatial scales.
Accessing natural resource information
Users agree that access to existing information is paramount. Less
emphasis is placed on the development of new information. Interviewees
said that they consider it acceptable to allow the depth of information to
vary for the various spatial scales based on extent of available
information. Although it is useful to target areas that have a wealth of
information, interviewees advocated for building a prototype that includes
places for which information is sparse.
Important services and web functions to provide in a natural resource
digital library
Potential users' familiarity with the concept of a digital library ranged
from "not at all" (34%) to "little" (<10%) to "somewhat" (31%), to
"familiar" (26%). Although most interviewees were less than somewhat
familiar with digital libraries, all had a good understanding of what a
digital library could feature.
A variety of features were mentioned as useful components of a digital
library. In order of importance these features were: powerful search
capability; access to spatial data; access to full-text documents and
reports; immediate accessibility; and access to synthesized information.
It is clear that information needs are quite broad and go beyond
traditional library holdings and services. Specifically, users want to be
able to quickly find, retrieve, integrate, and synthesize geo-referenced
and well organized documents, maps, spatial data, computer models,
databases, spreadsheets, analytical results, video clips, audio clips,
photographs, satellite imagery, presentation materials, and people
contacts at various spatial and temporal contexts across terrestrial,
aquatic, and marine environments.
Future Projects -- Moving Forward with a Natural Resources Digital
Library
Based on the results of our needs assessment, Oregon State University
Libraries plans to continue the development of the natural resources
digital library and work with key contacts and interviewees on the design
and implementation. Next steps are to:
- Design a prototype that will demonstrate electronic access to natural
resource information at multiple spatial scales: state (Oregon), basin
(Willamette Basin), ecoregion (Willamette Valley), watershed (5th or 6th
order watershed), county, and perhaps research forest (H.J. Andrews Long
Term Ecological Reserve), and temporal scales (present day, future
projections, historical conditions);
- Address aquatic, terrestrial, and marine environments;
- Demonstrate multi-format data and information discovery;
- Enable data and information integration and synthesis; provide
evaluations of information quality and data gaps;
- Facilitate people networking (e.g., searchable database of contact
information, research in progress, research findings, "ask an expert"
feature);
- Provide assistance to users of natural resource information accessed
through a digital library (e.g., new kind of extension agent); and
- Secure long-term funding.
We believe the needs assessment has been a worthwhile investment, and the
continued involvement of "real users" will result in a natural resources
digital library at Oregon State University that will be used and valued.
References
Condron, Frances et al. 1999.
Strategies for digital data: findings and recommendations from
digital data in archaeology: a survey of user needs. [Online].
Available:
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/strategies/index.html
[January 12, 2002].
Hill, Linda L. et al. 1997. User
evaluation: summary of the methodologies and results for the Alexandria
Digital Library Project, University of California, Santa Barbara.
[Online]. Available: http://www.asis.org/annual-97/alexia.htm
[January 12, 2002].
Marchionini, Gary, et al. (in press) The
people in digital libraries: multifaceted approaches to assessing needs
and impact. In A. Bishop et al. Digital library use: social practice
in design and evaluation. MIT Press forthcoming. [Online] Draft
available: http://ils.unc.edu/~march/revision.pdf
[January 12, 2002].
National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. 1998. Design and evaluation: a
review of the state of the art. D-Lib Magazine. [Online].
Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july98/nrc/07nrc.html
[January 12, 2002].
Oregon Progress Board. 2000. Oregon State of the Environment Report 2000. [Online]. Available: {http://oregonstate.edu/dept/eoarc/publication/2000/490} [February 14, 2002].
Pisciotta, Henry et al. 2001. Penn State
visual image user study. D-Lib Magazine 7 (7/8). [Online].
Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july01/pisciotta/07pisciotta.html
[January 12, 2002].
USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. In progress. User Needs Assessment for Adaptive Management Portal, National Science Foundation Grant 9983518. [Online]. Phase 1 interview notes available: {http://www.cse.ogi.edu/forest/team/phase1.html}
[January 14, 2002].
Interview Questions
- Do you use natural resources information for your work?
- Where do you go to access natural resources information for your
decision-making? Which site(s) is most important to you?
- Can you describe how you used natural resources information to address
a recent resource management decision or issue? What geographic and
temporal scales are most useful for the work you do?
- Did you have to do anything to the information to make it useful
(e.g., change the scale, change the attributes, update, fill in data gaps,
synthesize with other information)?
- In recent decision-making tasks, what kinds of natural resources
information did you need that you were not able to access? Is there other
information you wish you could have access to for your work?
- How much do you know about the concept of a Digital Library? Tell me
what the term Digital Library means to you and how you would use one.
- Have you used the OSU Libraries in the last 3 months to access
information? If so, what kinds of sources did you use? Did they meet your
needs?
- Assuming the OSU Libraries form a digital library, what prototype or
collection(s) would be of the greatest benefit to you professionally? Do
you think the OSU Libraries should move forward with a Natural Resources
Digital Library? Is a Natural Resources Digital Library the appropriate
name? Are you familiar with other efforts with a similar goal?
- In your opinion, what are important measures of effectiveness for a
natural resources digital library?
- Thinking of other ways to access information, what is your favorite
web site? What is the best feature of this web site? (note: this does not
have to be a source for natural resource information)?