DOCUMENT RESUME

Digital libraries are moving from research and development into commercial use. If they are to realize their full potential, however, the experiences of end users need to be taken into account from the earliest stages of design. Those end users are typically individuals who have no particular skills in information retrieval, and are accessing library resources from their own desks, without support from a librarian. These factors clearly have implications for design. The aim of the work reported in this paper was to better understand the usability issues raised when digital libraries are used in a natural setting. The method used was a protocol analysis of users working on a task of their own choosing to retrieve documents from publicly available digital libraries. Various classes of usability difficulties were found. This paper focuses on "use in context"--that is, usability concerns that arise from the fact that libraries are accessed in particular ways, under technically and organizationall