A content analysis on the use of methods in online user research

This paper will build on the Digital Library Federation-sponsored study by Denise Troll Covey (2002, Usage and usability assessment: library practices and concerns) to look at the state of the art of user research. One of the questions is whether the data that comes from people's research actually answers their research question. This is especially important for digital content because the methods that we often apply come from a non-digital world. An example of such a problem is asking only people physically in a library about a resource that is available worldwide.