Usability of Digital Libraries: A Source of Creative Tensions with Technical Developments

If digital libraries are to achieve their full potential, they need to be usable and used – by people for whom information retrieval is not generally the main goal. In this paper, we outline various views of ‘usability’ and how they apply specifically to digital libraries. There are great challenges to integrating user perspectives with technical developments, in terms of understanding those user perspectives, developing design processes that adequately accommodate them and ensuring adequate communications between all stakeholders in design. We discuss these issues.