Final Report
Executive Summary
The Academic Collaboration Environment (ACE) is an application that allows users in an academic environment to manage information retrieval and organization tasks commonly performed in the modern academic setting. Literature and interviews revealed that information gathering needs are diverse and may include performing research in a library for a research paper, interviewing people for a campus publication, gathering information for a radio show, collecting statistics, or preparing a reading or resource list for a course. The tools needed to find information for this wide range of tasks is beyond the scope of those offered in a traditional library.
Once users locate desired information, they want a way to organize it that allows reuse and sharing. Although we envisioned ACE as being useful to a broad academic community, we targeted our research and development toward a more specifically-defined audience: the International Area Studies (IAS) community. We defined our project scope and functional requirements according to the needs of these users. Our analysis of their needs revealed that although there are a multitude of tools available to them, they are either not aware of them, or have not worked them into their information seeking and organizational practices. The users we interviewed appreciate the ease of using Google and appreciate the value of library catalogs and resources, but expressed that what they want is an easier way to search across available resources and organize their information. Most of those we interviewed use very simple systems to organize their information, such as using their browsers to bookmark resources they find or compiling lists in a text editor such as Word.
We designed ACE to allow a user to search multiple types of sources such as Google, Google, Scholar, and library catalogs. A user can organize the items that are returned from these searches. They can save them to a project, annotate them, and share them with others. This allows grouping, reuse, and sharing of resources.
Future phases of ACE will include an enhanced user interface based on iterative design which incorporates user testing and feedback; expanded capabilities for import, storage and viewing; and collaborative functionality, including support for concurrency and versioning.
In addition to our advisor, Professor Ray Larson, contributors to this project included several members of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative group: Anya Kartavenko, Minakshi Mukherjee and Kim Carl. Early conversations with members of the California Digital Library, including Peter Brantley and Patricia Martin, were very helpful in shaping our research and development path.
You may download a copy of the final project report here.
ACE Final Report