Usability Evaluation of a Multimedia Archive: B@bele

Abstract

In institutional repositories, simple discovery and submission interfaces help increase documents deposit as scholars have very little time to self-archive. So far, however, usability evaluation of such interfaces has been limited. In this paper, we present the usability evaluation of a repository interface, i.e., the interface of B@bele, the DSpace installation of the Multimedia Production Centre (CPM) of the University Milano-Bicocca. The results of this evaluation point out the most important shortcomings of the present DSpace interface: difficulties with browsing within communities and collections; problems with the submission interface due to scarcely familiar terminology (metadata) or terms that are not relevant in the specific academic context (community); problems in the submission process due to some ambiguous buttons, to the lack of authority files, and to the lack of clearly marked compulsory fields. In this way, this study will help improve not only B@bele, but also all other installations of DSpace currently available.