LIS 7410 - Digital Libraries
Spring 2009 -- Section 01
Homework Assignment 2 (Professional Track)

Case study: a book-oriented digital library

Pick a publicly-available book-oriented digital library that interests you, and demonstrate a general understanding of the system, placing it clearly in its context. You case study may include, but is not limit to the following subtasks: Digital library interfaces are usually very visual in nature, and your texts are expected to be adequately illustrated. There is no standard outline for a case study report since different systems will require different treatments, but general outlines might follow such patterns as:

Introduction to the system [content, purpose, size...] || Interface design [Initial screen, presentation of specific items...] || Search function [Initial resource discovery, in-depth or advanced search capacity...] || Strength and Weakness... || Conclusion, Summary, Comments.

or

Background to the system [sponsor, users, purpose...] || Interface design [Initial screen, presentation of specific items...] || Browsing function || Search mechanism || Comparision to similar digital libraries... || Conclusion, Summary, Comments.

You report might be at least 5 written pages (excluding illustrations or printouts of sample pages), but no more than 20 pages in total (including illustrations and bibliography). Please submit a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx, rather than .rtf or .wpd) or a PDF document. Post your document on your course Website (which you have already created for Assignment 1) by making a link from "Homework 2" to your document. You do not need to email your URL to the instructor again.

For grading guidelines, please read this page.

Acknowledgement to Cavan McCarthy.

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Yejun Wu