Supporting research collaboration through personal digital library (PDL)

Abstract

Nowadays, Digital Libraries have an inescapable role on delivering information resources to their users and new trends in Digital Libraries are to change from the passive state of only providing information resources to their users to a more active state by enabling the users of Digital Library to collaborate and share knowledge with each other. This study addresses the situation of postgraduate students, whom are only limited to scholarly Digital Libraries or graduated students‟ thesis repository to conduct their research, by proposing the Personal Digital Library (PDL) Prototype with functionality to support research collaboration. In this dissertation the following objectives can be realized: (a) To indentify the required services and technologies to support research collaboration through Personal Digital Library; (b) To suggest the prototype of Personal Digital Library (PDL) with ability to support research collaboration; (c) To develop proposed Personal Digital Library (PDL) prototype; (d) To evaluate the usability of developed prototype of Personal Digital Library (PDL). This study adopts multiple data collection techniques that incorporate (a) survey on available systems and models of Personal Digital Libraries; (b) close-ended with follow-up open-ended survey on postgraduate students‟ research behavior and requirements; (c) The survey questionnaire, utilized from Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI), to evaluate the usability of prototype. The Web Site Design Method (WSDM) is employed to develop the Personal Digital Library Prototype. The developed prototype incorporates convenient content management and resource sharing with ability to integrate social network, activity awareness and users‟ interaction. The students‟ responses indicate the developed prototype is perceived useful.