MLIM6203 Digital libraries: principles and applications – Syllabus (Fall 2006)
Lecturer:
Dr. Sam Chu (ph: 2241-5894, e-mail: samchu@hku.hk, Runme Shaw Building 111B)
Dr. Alvin Kwan (ph: 2241-5324, email: cmkwan@hkucc.hku.hk, Runme Shaw 111)
Course coordinator: Dr. Sam Chu
Meeting Time: Wednesday 6:30-9pm, 13 Sept., 2006 - 6 Dec., 2006
(except on Oct. 25 – Reading Week & Nov. 15 and Nov. 29)
Venue:
Room 101, Runme Shaw Building, HKU
Course Description: This module introduces the motivation for digital library development and
evolution of digital library collections and services. Various issues of digital library development like
document types and formats, access strategies and interfaces, metadata and interoperability, economic
and social policies, and collection management and system evaluation are examined.
Aims and objectives

At the conclusion of this module, students will be able
o
to demonstrate familiarity with digital libraries, theories and issues underlying their
development and ongoing research issues;
o
to build a simple digital library; and
o
to help improve the quality of a digital library by evaluating it from different
perspectives (e.g., users and functionalities).
Major References:
Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries. London: Facet
Publishing. (http://library.hku.hk/search/t?SEARCH=Introduction+to+Digital+Libraries)
Witten, I. H., & Bainbridge, D. (2003). How to Build a Digital Library. Amsterdam: Morgan
Kaufmann. (http://library.hku.hk/search/t?SEARCH=How+to+Build+a+Digital+Library)
Course Outline:
Week 1 (Sept. 13 by Dr Chu): An introduction to digital libraries, collection management &
users’ needs assessment
Week 2 (Sept. 20 by Dr Chu): Information retrieval & best practice benchmarking
Week 3 (Sept. 27 by Dr Kwan): Documents for digital libraries
Week 4 (Oct. 4 by Dr Chu): Reference services & heuristic evaluation
Week 5 (Oct. 11 by Dr Chu): Digital archiving, preservation, legal issues & usability testing
Week 6 (Oct. 18 by Dr Kwan): Metadata for digital libraries development
Week 7 (Nov. 1 by a guest speaker – to be announced): Issues and challenges in designing and
managing digital libraries
Week 8 (Nov. 8 by Dr Kwan): Building a digital library collection
Week 9 (Nov. 22 by Dr Kwan): Interoperability issues in digital libraries development
Week 10 (Dec. 6 by Dr Kwan): Students’ presentation of their digital libraries – not graded
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Topics to cover in each lesson:
Week 1 (Sept. 13 by Dr Chu): An introduction to digital libraries, collection management &
users’ needs assessment
 Readings: An introduction to digital libraries
o Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries
 Chapter 1 – Digital libraries: definition and characteristics
o Witten, I. H., & Bainbridge, D. (2003). How to Build a Digital Library
 Chapter 1 “Orientation: The world of digital libraries”
o Borgman, C. L. (1999). What are digital libraries? Competing visions. Information
Processing & Management, 35: 227-243.
 Readings: Collection management
o Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries
 Chapter 5 – Collection management
o Smith, A. (2001). Strategies for Building Digitized Collections. Washington, D.C.:
Digital Library Federation; Council on Library and Information Resources.
(http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub101/contents.html)
 Readings: Digital library evaluation - Users’ needs assessment
o Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries
 Chapter 13 – Digital library evaluation
o Marchionini, G., Plaisant, C., & Komlodi, A. (2003). The People in Digital Libraries:
Multifaceted Approaches to Assessing Needs and Impact. In A. P. Bishop (Ed.),
Digital library use: social practice in design and evaluation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press. (http://ils.unc.edu/~march/revision.pdf)
Week 2 (Sept. 20 by Dr Chu): Information retrieval & best practice benchmarking
 Readings: Information retrieval
o Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries
 Chapter 9 – Information retrieval in digital libraries
o Arms, W. Y. (2000). Digital Libraries
 Chapter 10 – Information retrieval and descriptive metadata
(http://www.cs.cornell.edu/wya/DigLib/MS1999/Chapter10.html)
 Readings: Best practice benchmarking
o Bhutta, K.S. & Huq, F. (1999). Benchmarking – best practices: an integrated
approach. Benchmarking 6(3): 254-.
o Zairi, M. & Al-Mashari, M. (2005). The role of benchmarking in best practice
management and knowledge sharing. The Journal of Computer Information Systems
45(4): 14-29.
Week 3 (Sept. 27 by Dr Kwan): Documents for digital libraries
 Readings: Digital documents and their formats
o Witten, I. H., & Bainbridge, D. (2003). How to Build a Digital Library
 Chapter 4 “Documents: The raw material”
o Constable, P. (2001). Understanding Unicode – A general introduction to Unicode
standard. (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=IWSChapter04a)
o National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2002). Digital media file types:
Survey of common formats. (http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/isis/filetypes.html)
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Week 4 (Oct. 4 by Dr Chu): Reference services & heuristic evaluation
 Readings: Reference services
o Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries
 Chapter 11 – Digital library services
o Penka, J. T. (2003). The technological challenges of digital reference. D-Lib
Magazine, 9(2). (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february03/penka/02penka.html)
 Readings: Heuristic evaluation
o Nielsen, J. How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation.
(http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_evaluation.html)
o Nielsen, J. Ten Usability Heuristics.
(http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html)
o Nielsen, J. Severity Ratings for Usability Problems.
(http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/severityrating.html)
Week 5 (Oct. 11 by Dr Chu): Digital archiving, preservation, legal issues,
& usability testing
 Readings: Digital archiving, preservation, & legal issues
o Chowdhury, G. G., & Chowdhury, S. (2003). Introduction to Digital Libraries
 Chapter 10 – Digital archiving and preservation
 Chapter 12 – Social, economic and legal issues
o Jones, M., & Beagrie, N. (2001). Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A
Handbook. (http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/handbook/index.html)
o Besek, J. M. (2003). Copyright Issues Relevant to the Creation of a Digital Archive:
A Preliminary Assessment. (http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub112/contents.html)
 Readings: Usability testing
o Chu, S. (2006). Case Study: The Development and Management of the Online
Information Literacy Tutorial at the HKUST Library. Accepted for the book Library
and the First Year Experience to be published by the National Resources Center in
the U.S. in 2006.
o Hovater, M., Krot, M., Kiskis, D. L., Holland, I., & Altman., M. (2002). Usability
testing of the Virtual Data Center, Usability Workshop at Second ACM+IEEE Joint
Conference on Digital Libraries. (http://thedata.org/papers/jcdl02.pdf)
o Spool, J. M. (1999). Web site usability: a designer's guide [electronic resource].
 Chapter 17 - How We Tested Web Sites (available via HKU Library)
Week 6 (Oct. 18 by Dr Kwan): Meta data for digital libraries development
 Readings: Metadata
o Witten, I. H., & Bainbridge, D. (2003). How to Build a Digital Library
 Chapter 5 “Markup and metadata: Elements of organization”
o Taylor, C. (2003). An Introduction to metadata. University of Queensland Library.
(http://www.library.uq.edu.au/iad/ctmeta4.html)
o Morgan, E. L. (2004). Getting Started with XML: A Manual and Workshop.
(http://www.infomotions.com/musings/getting-started/)
Week 7 (Nov. 1 by guest speaker – to be announced): Issues and challenges in designing and
managing digital libraries
Week 8 (Nov. 8 by Dr Kwan): Building a digital library collection
 Readings: selected readings on an open-source digital library
o To be announced.
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Week 9 (Nov. 22 by Dr Kwan): Interoperability issues in digital libraries development
 Readings: Interoperability in digital libraries
o Witten, I. H., & Bainbridge, D. (2003). How to Build a Digital Library
 Chapter 5 “Interoperability: Standards and protocols”
o Carpenter, L. (2003). OAI for Beginners - the Open Archives Forum online tutorial.
(http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/english/intro.htm)
Week 10 (Dec. 6 by Dr Kwan): Students’ presentation of their digital libraries – not graded
 The presentation is for sharing purpose and it will not be graded. Each student group will
report on the progress of their project on building a digital library prototype.
Course Requirements and Assessment
In addition to participation (attendance, in-class and off-class discussions) which will amount to 10%
of the module score, there will be one major project and one individual assignment for the course. All
project/assignments need to be handed in on time unless you have reasonable excuse. No handwritten
assignments/project will be accepted. Both written and softcopy of the submissions are required.
One Individual Assignment: Evaluate a digital library
(worth 40% of the module and to be submitted on or before 1 November, 2006)
Students will make use of various strategies (user needs assessment, best practice benchmarking,
usability testing, heuristic evaluation, etc.) in evaluating a digital library. Each student will summarize
his/her evaluation and make suggestions for improving the digital library (if any) into a report of no
more than 10 pages.
Group Project: Build a digital library prototype
(worth 50% of the module and to be submitted on or before 27 December, 2006)
Each group of students (size of 4) will use an Open Source software (e.g., DSpace, Greenstone) to
develop a simple digital collection containing text, image, sound, and video files (at least 30
documents in total). A report is required to describe the collection (no more than 15 pages) and an
evaluation of the digital collection created.
Details about the individual assignment and the group project will be released later.
Class participation (10%)
Students are expected to attend all classes and to participate both in-class and off-class learning
activities actively. A student will fail the course if he/she misses more than 3 classes.
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