Research Article

A Mismatched Group of Items That I Would Not Find Particularly Interesting: Challenges and Opportunities with Digital Exhibits and Collections Labels

Melissa Harden
Product Owner, Center for Research Computing
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America
Email: mharden@nd.edu

Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon
Online Education and Technology Consultant
Indiana University South Bend

South Bend, Indiana, United States of America
Email: ama9@iu.edu

Mikala Narlock
Director, Data Curation Network
University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America
Email: mnarlock@umn.edu

Received: 21 June 2022 Accepted: 18 Oct. 2022

2022 Harden, Martinez-Montavon, and Narlock. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

DOI: 10.18438/eblip30194

Abstract

Objective – The authors sought to identify link language that is user-friendly and sufficiently disambiguates between a digital collection and digital exhibit platform for users from a R1 institution, or a university with high research activity and doctoral programs as classified in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

Methods – The authors distributed two online surveys using a modified open card sort and reverse-category test via university electronic mailing lists to undergraduate and graduate students to learn what language they would use to identify groups of items and to test their understanding of link labels that point to digitized cultural heritage items.

Results – Our study uncovered that the link terms utilized by cultural heritage institutions are not uniformly understood by our users. Terms that are frequently used interchangeably (i.e., Digital Collections, Digital Project, and Digital Exhibit) can be too generic to be meaningful for different user groups.

Conclusion – Because the link terms utilized by cultural heritage institutions were not uniformly understood by our users, the most user-friendly way to link to these resources is to use the term we—librarians, curators, and archivists—think is most accurate as the link text based on our professional knowledge and provide a brief description of what each site contains in order to provide necessary context.

Introduction

The main library website serves as a prominent access point for the entire enterprise of library resources, including print and online materials, services, and spaces. As Polger (2011) described “[t]he library website is a living document” (para. 1), changing as new information, resources, services, or features are made available. Because a library website makes a wide range of information available to users, it is imperative that the resources linked from the site are labeled, described, and contextualized in a meaningful way. In order to allow users to make informed decisions about which links are relevant to their needs, link labels must make sense.

At the time this study was conducted, there was a link in the main navigation of our library’s website labeled “Digital Collections,'' which pointed to a platform that included digital exhibits from our rare books department entitled “Digital Exhibits and Collections.” At the same time, we were about to launch a new site called “Marble,” a platform for providing access to digitized cultural heritage materials from our campus art museum, university archives, and rare books departments. We needed to determine an appropriate link label for this new site that succinctly and appropriately described it without introducing confusion. The digital exhibit platform primarily featured digital exhibits—interactive sites that feature curatorial text and collection highlights—while the new site primarily featured digital collections– akin to a catalog of items that are made available with basic descriptive data. This marked the first time our library had two separate platforms for these two distinct use cases. As a result, the name of the original platform, Digital Exhibits and Collections, would no longer be accurate because the two functions were split into two different sites, with collections moved to Marble. Therefore, we needed to identify link labels for both of these sites that accurately, meaningfully, and concisely described and differentiated the two resources in a way that made sense to users. We also wanted to ensure that any link language leveraged would be useful and understandable to both novice and advanced users, as our campus population includes undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty members from a wide variety of disciplines.

The need to add a link to the new digital collections site in the library website’s main navigation provided an opportunity to learn what link labels users thought best described the types of specialized resources found on the digital exhibits platform and digitized collections site. In our local context, because one site primarily featured digital collections and the other platform primarily featured digital exhibits, we needed to find out what meaning, if any, the term “digital exhibits” had for our users to determine if this would be a useful link label. We sought to test language that would resonate with users and strike a balance between the overly general and overly specific. 

We first conducted an environmental scan of Association of Research Library (ARL) websites to see if there was consistent link label language used by our peer libraries for digital exhibits and digital collections links. Finding none, we looked to the literature to see if other studies had been conducted for this purpose. Because no study was identified that tested these specific terms (i.e., “Digital Collections” and “Digital Exhibits”) against each other, we determined that we needed to design our own study for this purpose. Therefore, we designed a user study to help us answer the question, “What meaningful, user-centered, and concise link language accurately describes and differentiates between two sites?” Specifically, we were interested in testing how well the terms “digital collections” and “digital exhibits” resonated with users, including both undergraduate and graduate students. The intention of this dual audience was to see if there was a difference between novice and advanced users. Given that the library website is the main portal for the entire student body, we wanted to be sure that any link language used would be understandable for all.

Literature Review

For the purposes of this research, we focused on the published articles and presentations on user experience testing that focus on link labels (or link language) and card sorting activities. This selected literature review provided a solid grounding in the theories and best practices of both to ensure we were not duplicating research efforts and allowed us to build on previous work so we could be thoughtful and intentional in how we designed our surveys. Because our study falls at the intersection of link labels and card sorting exercises, we have divided our literature review into these two categories below.

Link Labels

Link labels are the words or phrases that display a hyperlink. It is important that link titles contain meaningful natural language but are also specific enough to give a clear impression of where those links point. There are several factors users consider when determining whether or not to click on a link, one of which is the link label (Budiu, 2020). Through various studies, it is clear that using terminology that is too broad to be helpful has been identified as an issue in library card sorts (Duncan & Holliday, 2008; Hennig, 2001; Lewis & Hepburn, 2010). Alternatively, using very specific language may cause link text to be too long (Dickstein & Mills, 2000), leading to visual clutter. While there may be some variation in findings based on individual library context, one common theme is that links with branded names are unlikely to be interpreted correctly by users (Gillis, 2017; Hepburn & Lewis, 2008; Kupersmith, 2012). Based on this information, we did not consider using the branded names—the institutionally-specific name used to market and promote a resource or service—of our digital exhibits platform and collections site as potential link labels on the main library website and sought to test language that would resonate with users and strike a balance between the overly general and overly specific.

A user-centered approach means using website language that resonates with users; however, as Francoeur (2021b) pointed out, it can be challenging “to balance the demands to be concise, clear, and understandable” (para. 2). This is especially true when library- or archives-specific language or jargon is used (Burns et al., 2019). The terms used to describe materials by information professionals have distinct meanings: reducing them to common terms is not only a disservice to our profession and unique skill set, but also to our users, as overly generic terms can be equally confusing. Moreover, leveraging the appropriate term can serve as an educational opportunity, teaching even casual browsers of content the nuances between terms, leading to more efficient searching and use of materials in the future. Burns et al. (2019), described the importance of the challenge accurately: “More than just an issue of semantics, the branding and labeling we employ in digital library interfaces plays a critical role in helping users find, utilize, and understand archival and special collections in the online environment” (p. 5).

The study Burns et al. (2019) conducted presented the closest match to the information we wanted to discern in our own case. In this study, the researchers reviewed terminology used by ARL member libraries to identify which terms were most commonly used to label digitized cultural heritage collections. They identified a variety of terms, noting that the inconsistent use of terms may be confusing to users. Burns et al. designed a survey-based study to identify the terminology that users were “most likely to associate with different materials commonly found in digital libraries” (p. 5) and the terms that “are potentially confusing and likely to be misunderstood by users” (p. 6). Their task-based questions asked users where they would click to find various items that typically appear in digital libraries and were meant to help identify terminology that would disambiguate the term “digital library.” The label options provided to respondents included Digital History Collections, Digital Library, Digital Archives, and Digital Collections (Burns et al., 2019, p. 7). Their results suggested that there is little to no consensus about the interpretation of these various labels, highlighting the challenge that exists in meeting various web usability goals with respect to link labels and terminology.

While the study conducted by Burns et al. (2019) addressed a very similar question to ours and provided a useful framework for the design of our study, theirs did not test or address the use of “digital exhibit” as a link or navigation label. Similarly, there was no mention of best terms for digital collections and digital exhibits in the document “Library Terms That Users Understand” (Kupersmith, 2012). In our local context, because one site primarily features digital collections and the other platform primarily features digital exhibits, we needed to find out what meaning, if any, the term “digital exhibits” has for our users to determine if this would be a useful link label. A deeper dive into the relevant literature indicated that the term “digital exhibits” has not been adequately studied from a user-experience perspective. When studying digital libraries, the researchers in usability studies have tended to focus on terms like “digital library” or “digital archive” without much analysis as to why those were the terms selected (e.g., Burns et al., 2019; Kelly, 2014). Instead, terms like “digital collections” and “digital exhibits” can be, and often are, used interchangeably in library literature without much analysis. In some instances, the words are used synonymously, e.g., the book Digital Collections and Exhibits is exclusively about exhibits, yet the author published under both terms (Denzer, 2015).

For the purposes of this research, we defined digital collections as a catalog of items that are made available with basic descriptive data, and users search and sort as they wish; digital exhibits, on the other hand, are highly mediated online experiences that feature specially selected items, extensive curatorial text, and often a predetermined path to explore the content.

Card Sorting

Card sorting has been used by several libraries to test site structure and nomenclature, and is in fact a frequent testing option for libraries (Brucker, 2010). A key benefit of card sorting is that users can propose their own organizational and mental models for information and are not influenced by pre-existing structure (Faiks & Hyland, 2000). There are numerous variants of the card sorting exercise, all of which are used for different purposes (Spencer, 2009). For example, some studies leveraged an open card sorting activity, which allowed testing participants to sort cards into categories they create (e.g., Dickstein & Mills, 2000; Lewis & Hepburn, 2010; Robbins et al., 2007; Sundt & Eastman, 2019; Whang, 2008). Others have used closed card sorting tests, in which users were provided categories and asked to put content into the pre-defined groupings (e.g., Diller & Campbell, 1999; Faiks & Hyland, 2000; Guay et al., 2019; Hennig, 2001; Paladino et al., 2017; Rowley & Scardellato, 2005). Others have used a hybrid approach (e.g., Paladino et al., 2017), in which participants could sort into predefined groups or create their own. Lastly, while card sorting is commonly used for in-person user experience testing, it has also been leveraged remotely (e.g., Ford, 2013).

Reverse category tests have been used by some academic library teams to validate or expand upon results from prior card sorting activities in preparation for larger website redesign projects (Hennig, 2001; Sundt & Eastman 2019; Whang, 2008). In these cases, users were asked where they would click to find specific items, resources, types of information, and others, and were provided different categories as answer options. These categories corresponded with main navigation categories.

Aims

In order to determine a concise, specific, and non-duplicative term to label the newly launching digital library platform, Marble, and relabel the existing digital exhibits platform, Digital Exhibits and Collections, the authors set out to answer the question: which link terms do our users not only understand, but also find meaningful? How can we, as librarians and information professionals, sufficiently differentiate between terms like “Digital Collections” and “Digital Exhibits”— terms that are often used interchangeably but have specific meanings?

Method

To address this challenge, our team developed a multi-phased, institutional review board (IRB) approved study that was conducted in Spring 2021, when the authors all worked at Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame. First, with the help of student workers, we conducted an initial review of different link titles used on the websites of ARL member libraries. This work was critical to confirm that there was no consensus on or consistency in application of various terms, as well as to identify potential terms to test in parts two and three of our study. Secondly, we developed an initial survey that was a modified open card sort—we provided users with items already sorted into groups and asked them to supply labels for the groups. Thirdly, using the terms provided from the first survey, as well as from the ARL members’ websites, we developed a second survey, a reverse category test, in which users were asked to identify which items or features they would expect to find based on various link terms. Data was analyzed to identify patterns and themes, and ultimately to inform decisions about link language on the main library website. This section provides more details on our methods and decisions.

ARL Link Language Environmental Scan

We chose to focus the initial scan on ARL libraries because they are part of our peer network; many of these libraries dedicated similar time and resources to their digital collections and exhibits. We recruited student workers to browse the websites of all 148 ARL libraries and record any link related to digital exhibits or online collections on the home page or main navigation; anything that was online and could be even tangentially related was captured, including terms such as “digital library” and “digital resources.” For sites that leveraged explanatory language to clarify their links (e.g., “This site is for X, Y, Z”) the title of the link, as well as the additional contextual information, was captured for a holistic view of how these libraries presented their digital collections. While we did capture a few sites with branded names, we did not include those in our analysis, as those would be too specific to the institution and not helpful for our purposes.

User Surveys

Modified Open Card Sort

As a follow-up to our environmental scan of ARL libraries, we conducted two surveys of Notre Dame students. The first survey was designed to operate like a modified open card sort—we provided users with items already sorted into groups and asked them to supply labels for the groups (see Appendix A for full survey). It was critical that the questions on the survey did not include the language we were testing so as to not predispose our users to the language we expected (Nielsen, 2009). The first group of items contained screenshots of items and descriptions from the digital collections platform, and the second group of items contained screenshots from portions of digital exhibits. All screenshots were cropped to remove any site branding or logos. For both groups of items, we asked users two open-ended questions: “How would you describe this group of items?” and “What name would you give a group of items like this?” Both of these questions were designed to better understand how users interpret these items and elicit potential terminology, without suggesting common library terms, like “collections” or “exhibits.” While the second question directly asked respondents to provide a group label, the first one was purposefully meant to elicit longer responses, with the aim of understanding users’ thinking and collecting additional link label terms to test in the second survey. We did not use a formal coding method to analyze the survey results but rather noted the frequency of the terminology supplied by our users for the link labels as well as in the free-text descriptions of content. We focused on identifying unique terms that were used most often, as well as less-used terms that might appear on library websites.

Reverse Category Test

The second user survey was designed to operate like a reverse category test, much like the one described in the Burns et al. (2019) study. The key difference between their study and ours is our inclusion of digital exhibits in the test. The first set of six questions asked students, “If I clicked on a link called [link label], I would expect to see…” where the link label was changed to test different words or phrases. The link labels tested were: “Digital Collections,” “Digital Exhibits,” “Digital Artifacts,” “Digital Showcase,” “Digital Archive,” “Digital Projects,” and “other” where students could provide their own text. We chose these labels based on our own local context (“Digital Collections” and “Digital Exhibits” have meanings and scopes that are well understood in our own library system), the student responses from the first survey (“Digital Artifacts” and “Digital Showcase”), and our analysis of ARL library websites (“Digital Archive” and “Digital Projects”).

For each link label, respondents were asked to select all answer options that applied. Answer options included: artwork (e.g., photographs, paintings, sculptures), ephemera (e.g., posters, broadsides), e-books, archival or specialized collections (e.g., rare books, manuscripts, diaries, letters), scholarly journals and articles, item details (e.g., metadata), explanatory information about the items, historical and social context of the items, interactive features (e.g., dynamic timelines and maps), related items, datasets and databases, and other (with a write-in option). Some of these answer options were included based on student responses from the first survey, and some of them were supplied by the authors.

The second set of questions on the second survey asked: “Below are examples of content linked from a library website. What link would you follow to get to each item?” The examples contained screenshots of digitized items from our digital collections and digital exhibit platforms, plus descriptive text and metadata (see Appendix A for full survey). In order to minimize the visual differences between the way that items in these two platforms are presented, we used screenshots of just the item image and cut and pasted the exhibit text or collection metadata into the survey platform so that the formatting from the different sites would not influence student answers. The answer options were the same as the labels for the first part of the survey (“Digital Collections,” “Digital Exhibits,” “Digital Artifacts,” “Digital Showcase,” “Digital Archive,” and “Digital Projects” along with an “Other” write-in option). Students were only able to select one of these choices. 

These surveys were distributed online through two key mechanisms: the university-wide weekly update, which reaches all undergraduate and graduate students, and electronic mailing lists of different disciplines, including political science and art history, which reach more targeted groups of undergraduates and graduate students. The goal with using the university-wide email was to reach and solicit input from users that might rarely leverage online cultural heritage materials, such as students from disciplines like business, engineering, or psychology. We chose the political science and art history specific electronic mailing lists because we assumed these students would be familiar with online cultural heritage materials and might represent our more advanced users. By approaching the survey distribution from this perspective, we hoped to represent both novice and advanced users.

For both surveys, students who completed the survey were entered into a chance to win a $50 gift card; for the first survey, one gift card was offered, and for the second, three $50 cards were offered. These incentives were funded as part of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Contact information was collected separately from the survey instrument via a Google Form to keep responses anonymous.

We reviewed results from the second survey to determine if there were consistent patterns among responses that might suggest link labels and terminology that were commonly understood across user groups.

Results

ARL Link Language Environmental Scan

Unsurprisingly, we found most institutions used terms like digital collections, digital archives, and digital library; however, those phrases were not necessarily applied consistently across institutions. For example, link labels of “Digital Collections” on two different library sites did not necessarily point to the same types of resources. Some of these digital collections brought together curated, digitized resources from the library’s archives and special collections, while others also included scholarship from university researchers or journals published by the library or university. We found that links related to digital collections were often located alongside or underneath headings such as “Collections” or “Specialized Collections.” For libraries that provided access to and publicized online exhibits, these were more frequently discoverable alongside digital scholarship projects or events as a companion to physical exhibits.

With no clear consensus on link labels found through the literature or our environmental scan, we decided to conduct two user surveys to learn more about how our students understand the terminology relevant to our question. While there are numerous ways to evaluate digital libraries, we needed to find solutions that would more closely match our circumstances. As has been demonstrated over the past few decades, because “digital libraries are designed for specific users and to provide support for specific activities… [they] should be evaluated in the context of their target users and specific applications and contexts” (Chowdhury et al., 2006, p. 671. For that reason, we chose to focus on the needs of our students and test them directly through online surveys.

User Surveys

Modified Open Card Sort

In the first survey, 52 participants started the survey. Twenty individuals did not complete the survey, and incomplete answers, including partials, were removed from the dataset for analysis. One respondent who started the survey noted that these items were “a mismatched group of items that I would not find particularly interesting,” and did not complete the survey. This left a total of 32 responses. Respondents were evenly split between graduate and undergraduate students (n=16). Notre Dame has 8,874 undergraduate students and 3,935 graduate students (University of Notre Dame, 2022), so our sample represents a heavier skew toward graduate students than the general student body. Respondents skewed heavily towards College of Arts and Letters students (n=32), though this makes sense because the College of Arts and Letters is the largest college on campus, with 3,000 undergraduate and 1,100 graduate students. The next largest college is the Mendoza College of Business, with 1,700 undergraduate and 625 graduate students (Mendoza College of Business, 2022), for about 18% of the student body. In contrast, the School of Architecture, the smallest school, only awarded 1.6% of all the degrees conferred at Notre Dame between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021 (Office of Strategic Planning & Institutional Research, 2022). Some students listed multiple affiliations, e.g., College of Arts and Letters and College of Science, which is why the total adds up to more than the 32 participants.

Due to the open-ended nature of the survey questions, students’ answers varied wildly. When asked what term they would give to a group of items librarians might refer to as digital collections, many used terms like Historical (n=10, 31%), Art (n=7, 22%) and Artifacts (n=6, 19%). One user also wondered why these items would be grouped together in one space.

When asked to assign a term to what librarians might call a digital exhibit, students often focused on the content of the exhibit instead of the media. We had selected two extant exhibits from our platform: one about women’s right to vote, and one about printed representations of animals. As a result, many students used terms like “Socio Political” or “Drawings” to describe the two. Others were again wondering why these items would be grouped together. At least three respondents suggested a variation of “collections” and two suggested “exhibit” or “exhibition.” Based on students’ responses to this survey, we identified two terms of interest to test: digital artifacts, because of the frequency in which it showed up in answers to the first set of questions, and digital showcase, because it seemed to capture the respondents’ focus on “art” in both sets of questions.

Table 1

First Survey Respondents by School or College

School/College	Count
School of Architecture	0
College of Arts and Letters	21
Mendoza College of Business	5
College of Engineering	2
Keough School of Global Affairs	2
The Graduate School	4
The Law School	0
College of Science	5
Total	39

Reverse Category Test

In the second survey, 45 participants started the survey and 3 did not complete it. We once again removed all incomplete answers from the dataset for analysis. Of the 42 participants who completed the survey, 31 were undergraduate students, 10 were graduate students, and 1 was a postdoctoral research assistant. Respondents again skewed heavily towards the College of Arts and Letters (n=27). Some students listed multiple affiliations, e.g., College of Arts and Letters and College of Science, which is why the total adds up to more than the 42.

Table 2

Second Survey: Respondents by School or College

School/College	Count
School of Architecture	0
College of Arts and Letters	27
Mendoza College of Business	5
College of Engineering	6
Keough School of Global Affairs	2
The Graduate School	8
The Law School	0
College of Science	10
Total	58

The questions in the second survey were more close-ended, which allowed us to observe some interesting patterns. When we asked users what they would expect to see in each of the six potential link labels (Digital Collections, Digital Exhibits, Digital Artifacts, Digital Showcase, Digital Archive, and Digital Projects), we found that many expected to find archival or specialized collections in Digital Collections (n=36), Digital Artifacts (n=34), and Digital Archives (n=33), while slightly fewer expected to find those materials in Digital Exhibits (n=27). More than half the students also expected to find e-books (n=26) and scholarly journals and articles (n=24) in Digital Collections, and a significant number of students expected to find scholarly journals and articles (n=22) and datasets and databases (n=15) in Digital Archive.

When it came to features that librarians, archivists, and curators often associate with our work, student expectations did not always line up. While a majority of students did expect to see explanatory information about the items (n=22) and historical and social context of the items (n=26) in Digital Exhibits, fewer expected to see item details (e.g., metadata) in any of the link labels (n= between 8 and 10).

There was a wide range of responses to the questions that asked students to apply labels to specific examples of digitized items. In other words, there was no identifiable pattern, suggesting that there is not widespread shared meaning of these terms.

Table 3

Aggregated Responses to the Question “What Would You Expect to See If You Clicked on the Following Link?”

Table 4

Aggregated Responses from the Second Survey to the Question, “What Link Would You Click to Get to Each of the Following?”

Item Name	Digital Collections	Digital Exhibits	Digital Artifacts	Digital Showcase	Digital Archive	Digital Projects	Where it lives on our website
Shoes	N=8 (19%)	N=24 (57%)	N=2 (5%)	N=3 (7%)	N=4 (10%)	N=1 (2%)	Digital Collections
Peru’s First Newspaper	N=4 (10%)	N=8 (19%)	N=17 (40%)	N=1 (2%)	N=12 (29%)	0	Digital Exhibits
Collegiate Jazz Festival	N=8 (19%)	N=5 (12%)	N=4 (10%)	N=5 (12%)	N=17 (40%)	N=3 (7%)	Digital Collections
Meeting d’aviation Nice.	N=14 (33%)	N=7 (17%)	N=4 (10%)	N=3 (7%)	N=13 (31%)	N=1 (2%)	Digital Collections
The Author; The Journal	N=9 (21%)	N=12 (29%)	N=11 (26%0	0	N=7 (17%)	N=3 (7%)	Digital Exhibits
The Ferrell Bible	N=6 (14%)	N=6 (14%)	N=16 (38%)	N=3 (7%)	N=11 (26%)	0	Digital Exhibits
New edition of a general Collection of the ancient Irish music	N=16 (38%)	N=4 (10%)	n=7 (17%)	n=4 (10%)	n=8 (19%)	n=3 (7%)	Digital Collections

Discussion

The results of our study suggested that, among our users, there was no consistent understanding of the terms most commonly used by libraries to describe the types of digitized cultural heritage items found on our digital exhibits and collections platforms. Without a common understanding or interpretation of these terms, using those terms alone as link labels would not be enough for most users to clearly understand the types of information they would find by following those links. Similarly, the other terms suggested by our students were not well-understood across the board in the follow-up survey. There were several terms that showed up more frequently in the student responses, such as “archives” and “artifacts.” However, these terms have specific meaning to librarians, curators, archivists, and other researchers. As mentioned earlier, using them to describe our digitized and contextualized content would not be entirely accurate and may in fact cause confusion for more advanced researchers who have specific associations with these terms. As such, we would not use these terms as link text to broadly label entire digital collections or exhibits sites because of the additional confusion this would cause for internal workflows and the work of another key constituency: advanced researchers.

Additionally, more graduate students selected the term “Digital Projects” than undergraduates in the second survey. While this term seemed to resonate well with this small group of users, it is an all-encompassing term that may not provide enough information to users about what they might find at a link with that label. Other researchers using card sorting have found that some terms can be so broad and vague as to be unhelpful, such as “resources” (Hennig, 2001) and “services” (Hennig, 2001; Duncan & Holliday, 2008). We suspect that “digital projects” might be one such term.

While beyond the scope of this study, an interesting data point emerged related to scholarly articles, e-books, and datasets: nearly half of respondents indicated they would expect to see e-books and scholarly journal articles in Digital Collections (e-books, n=26, and scholarly journal articles, n=24) and Digital Archives (e-books, n=19, and scholarly journal articles, n=22). A significant number of participants would expect to see datasets and databases in Digital Archives (n=15) (See Table 3). Future research could explore this to better understand why users expected to find datasets and databases in digital archives, and whether it, too, is a term that is poorly understood.

Based on these results, we determined the most user-friendly way to link to these resources was to use the term we—librarians, curators, and archivists—think is most accurate as the link text based on our professional knowledge and provide a brief description of what each site contains in order to provide necessary context. For example, the link entitled “Digital Exhibits,” could also include the brief description: “In-depth explorations of a theme using items from our collections, curated by our librarians and staff.” This solution allows librarians and archivists to refer to various digital collections or exhibits sites in a clear, distinct, and consistent manner, and the brief description provides necessary additional context and serves as a teaching tool to help our users understand what we mean by these link label terms. The brief description, when appropriate, can also include words that students might be looking for, such as “archives” and “artifacts,” without making inaccurate claims about our digital exhibits or collections. Lastly, this approach also allows our library to leverage specific and meaningful terms to help educate users on library resources. Less than a quarter of respondents expected to see descriptive information (metadata) or related items in any of the options (see Table 3). In leveraging precise language to concisely describe the links and supplementing that with additional descriptive text, we can educate users not only on the meanings of these words, but also on the different types of resources and support available to them. In other words, while our profession has a tendency to use terms like digital collections and digital exhibits interchangeably, it is critical that we use terms precisely—not necessarily because students intuitively know the difference, but because this is an opportunity to educate users on different ways to access content online.

These descriptions could be added in a variety of ways. The link could be accompanied by a brief phrase or sentence to provide context. This option would require web content or menu structure that allows for links to have additional text next to them. Another option is to provide the descriptive text in a tooltip that appears when a user hovers over the link. The method for providing descriptive text could be tested further in a usability study.

Limitations

This study has a few limitations. First, this was a relatively small sample size: 32 respondents completed the first survey, and 42 respondents completed the second survey. While there was a mixture of undergraduates and graduate students who responded to each survey, the total number of respondents to each survey overall was not large. Additionally, respondents skewed heavily toward affiliation with the College of Arts and Letters. Approaches to research and experience with and awareness of digital collections and digital exhibits may be different among students with different primary college affiliations. Due to limited responses from some of the colleges, there were not enough data to be able to determine whether there were any significant disciplinary differences for preferred link labels. Finally, these surveys were sent only to students at the University of Notre Dame. While these survey results represent the thoughts of students at one campus, the results may provide a launching point for other institutions’ usability studies.

Conclusion

In this research study, we set out to learn more about users’ understandings of terms related to digital libraries, specifically to disambiguate a digital collections site from a digital exhibits site. Following a literature review, the authors conducted an environmental scan of ARL Libraries’ websites to get a clearer picture of how peer institutions were approaching this distinction. Without a consensus, the authors conducted two surveys of undergraduate and graduate students at an R1 institution. The results suggested that there was no clear understanding of various terms among users. We suggested the best path forward in labeling the links of these sites was to provide additional contextual information to help educate users and make links clearer.

These examples demonstrated the importance of partnering user input and feedback with professional expertise. While our first instinct may be to leverage language that is most familiar to some users, this approach not only minimizes our professional contributions and expertise, but also can be confusing to other users. This study affirmed the importance of using meaningful language: while broad terms like “digital project” might be catchy, they are ultimately too broad to be helpful. There was no consensus among the undergraduate and graduate students surveyed as to what these terms might actually lead to.

This study, building on the work of previous scholars (Burns, 2019) included examples of digitized items from our library system; however, the terms tested were not necessarily specific to our context. Therefore, the results of this study may provide useful guidance or considerations for other libraries and archives attempting to identify appropriate link language on their own organizations’ websites or as a jumping off point for developing their own user studies. As libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations continue to distribute content online, build and implement new services, and even consolidate and sunset previous services, using specific terms to clearly label and disambiguate links will be of continued importance.

Author Contributions

Melissa Harden: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon: Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing Mikala Narlock: Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

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Appendix A

Survey Instruments Distributed Through Electronic Mailing Lists

Survey 1

Survey 2

If