Digital libraries: did you ask the users?

The necessity for a more comprehensive understanding of user needs, objectives, and behaviour in employing digital library systems is stressed repeatedly in new projects as the basis for designing effective systems. However, not many such projects seem to follow a rigorous “user-centered” design approach, with a strong involvement of a key library user: the librarians. A strong cooperation with librarians from all over Europe is what we have experimented in the LAURIN project which involves seventeen participants from several countries, including a large group of libraries. LAURIN has two major goals. 1. To set up a network of digitalized newspaper clipping archives that can be accessed through the Internet in a centralized fashion, for searching and retrieving clippings. 2. To provide a generic model to be used by individual libraries for scanning, digitalizing, storing, and indexing newspaper clippings, and making them accessible via the LAURIN network