Digital Libraries in Education

The educational community represents one of the key audiences for digital libraries (Fox, 2004). “Digital libraries have become a core ingredient, a collective memory of the educational environment of today and of the future and they have the potential for transforming teaching and

learning by providing supporting resources, tools, and services and provide a virtual learning environment open to new technologies” (Kalinichenko, 2003, p. 57). Educators at all levels represent a growing and increasingly important community of digital library users. The need for digital libraries to become more user-centered to better support the educational tasks and

activities of students and teachers is widely recognized. As an important provider of digital libraries, the library community has become increasingly aware of the need to understand how educators identify and use digital materials in the classroom (OCLC E-learning Task Force, 2003, p. 11). Gaining a better understanding of how educators seek, select, and use digital materials in their instructional context is viewed as critical for building effective and useful digital information tools.

Studies of online information seeking behavior in education constitute an impressive body of research. Sumner et al. (2003) and Sumner and Marlino (2004) have addressed the implications of educators’ behavior in relation to the interface design of digital libraries. However, as Hart (1998) points out, initial studies were devoted to the physical sciences. Borgman et al., for example, have done extensive work on the information seeking process of geography professors and their use of the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype (ADEPT) project (Borgman et al., 2000; Borgman et al., 2004; Borgman et al., 2005). The researchers looked at how faculty members use digital materials in their teaching as opposed to their research. Their research indicates faculty members prefer to search by concept as well as geographic location.

Another prominent area of research in science education is that surrounding the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). The NSDL provides access to collections of science,

technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational resources and services.27 The development of system requirements to support interoperability and reuse of educational content

for different applications has been at the center of the NSDL’s program. Nevertheless, as Recker et al. (2004) point out, little attention has been devoted to understanding the characteristics of learning environments and the role digital learning resources could play in these environments. Broad availability and open access to educational materials, even on a large scale, does not necessarily translate into easy access and effective use and integration of these materials into instructional practice (Recker et al., 2005).

Over the past decade, a number of studies have been conducted that focus on the use of digital libraries and information in the humanities (Marchionini & Crane, 1994; Bates, Wilde, & Siegfried, 1993; Bates, Wilde, & Siegfried, 1995; Bates, 1996). More recent contributions to the field include the work of Crane, (2003) who focused specifically on cultural heritage digital libraries while Buchanan (2005) investigated the information-seeking behavior of humanities scholars.

To date, we have little understanding of the effectiveness and the actual use of digital resources in the classroom. As Borgman (2005) notes, investigations into how educators search for materials or how they use the digital resources to support instruction are still scarce.

While an increasing number of scholars and educators recognize the pedagogical value of web-based resources and encourage their use in the classroom, not much is known on their actual employment in day-by-day teaching and learning practices. In recent years efforts have been directed toward building educational digital repositories of teaching and high-quality learning resources, primarily in the form of learning objects. A significant contribution was made by a large-scale study produced by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at University of California Berkeley. The study investigated the use, as well as the users, of digital resources in the humanities and social sciences in undergraduate education (Harley et al., 2006). The findings showed that faculty integrate digital primary resources into their teaching to improve students’

learning. Their personal teaching styles and methods had a stronger influence on how educators use digital materials than other factors, including institutional, disciplinary, or demographic characteristics. The study found that faculty use an array of digital resources, with differences related to their subject or discipline. For example, political science instructors drew heavily upon data sets while art, architecture, history, and anthropology instructors preferred images. When searching for digital resources, teachers relied on Google as their primary search service. A significant number also used their personal digital image collections as a resource for their teaching. They preferred to personally aggregate classroom materials by mixing their own collections with resources collected from other sources. The study also identified some of the reasons why digital resources are often underused by teachers. For example, some faculty insist that digital resources simply do not mesh with their approach to teaching. Others find it difficult to overcome the technical and financial barriers, including the availability, reliability, and high cost of computer and Internet access necessary to make effective use of digital materials in the classroom. They also indicated the lack of time as one of the main constraints in the use of digital resources.

In the context of middle and high school teachers, the Effective Access Project produced useful data on how teachers access and use web-based educational resources (Carlson & Reidy, 2004; Hanson & Carlson, 2005). Through a series of surveys, focus groups, and telephone interviews, the authors examined twenty-five high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators to provide feedback for educational resource developers as they improve the design and integration of digital educational resources into the classroom. The study found that while digital educational resources have changed teachers’ practices, the change was not always positive. In many ways, teachers felt their instruction was less efficient and therefore less effective. Findings highlighted that time required to find appropriate resource online was a

major source of frustration. Teachers typically had to go from site to site to find appropriate resources. No one site or search was sufficient. The starting point for searching was usually a commercial search engine such as Yahoo or Google, and sometimes a favorite educational site. The findings highlighted a number of design features that teachers would like to find on a website of educational resources including “searching capabilities, methods for submitting questions, links to related materials, and the assurance that the website is supported by a reputable sources” (Carlson & Reidy, 2004, p. 69). In general, the way web resources are

integrated into the classroom is very similar to how print materials would be. With their findings, the study’s authors aimed to “create a bridge between the needs of teachers and the work of developers” (p. 69).

Through its annual evaluation reports, the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM)28 provides perspectives on the end uses of online educational resources for K-12 education. In the fourth GEM annual report, Fitzgerald, Lovin, and Branch (2003) identified the main assumptions behind the need for an educational gateway to learning resources like GEM. Educational

materials available on the Internet can be of equally high and poor quality and therefore require considerable effort both for discovery and selection. Teachers lack the time needed for such careful analysis which often hinders their ability to plan and integrate technology into their teaching.

The findings of GEM are supported by the educational literature indicating that teachers persistently experience a shortage of time for preparation, primarily due to their heavy workloads (Smagorinsky, 1999; Swaim & Swaim, 1999). Searching the web for educational resources is a process perceived as time consuming and frustrating (Voorbij, 1999). Finding digital content that is aligned with a particular lesson can be extremely difficult (Trotter, 1999), while even more

daunting is the discovery of highly-specific content that meets the needs of the curriculum requirements (Robertson, 1999). Although the web presents an almost unlimited source of materials and ideas for teaching with thousands of collections of educational materials freely available, accessing this massive amount of content can be difficult. Lack of a unified search system is one of the main hindering factors behind teachers’ inability to find suitable digital materials quickly and easily (Small, Sutton, Miwa, Urfels, & Eisenberg, 1998).