This landmark text captures a global cross-section of leading voices and provides a clear and coherent overview of the user studies domain and user issues in digital libraries.
As the information environment becomes increasingly electronic, digital libraries have proliferated, but the focus has often been on innovations in technology and not the user. Although user needs have become a popular concept, in practice the users are rarely consulted in the development of services. Research and analysis of users is essential to fine-tune the content and approach of digital libraries to the diverging requirements and expectations of incredibly varied communities and to ensure libraries are effective, accessible and sustainable in the long term.
Key topics include:

Readership: Information professionals involved in supporting, developing or designing digital library services, researchers wanting to address the user dimension in their work and students on LIS and computer science courses who want to understand the importance of the user in information services.