Designing for specialized visual domains: A preparatory qualitative analysis for a digital collection in the Book Arts

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the organization and design of a real-life digital collection for the field of Book Arts. This paper also examines the challenges in building digital libraries for visual domains with specialized user pools. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative study was conducted. An online survey asked participants from the field of Book Arts to provide free-text descriptions of randomized visual representatives taken from the collection using open-ended question and answer boxes. Themes extracted from the survey were coded and presented using basic statistical measures. Findings - The results of this study identified a set of specialized access points for items that were selected as being significant for Book Arts and perhaps other areas in the Fine Arts. Results informed retrieval of visual information for this domain along with user interface design and evaluation strategies. In addition, the survey used in this study demonstrated the ability to collect longer, more in-depth answers and category terms alike from the participants. Originality/value - This study was necessary for the practical purpose of organizing a digital collection of the Book Arts, a unique collection. While similar studies have been conducted, even for collections deemed to be from the Fine Arts, previous studies do not agree on what is important for organizing digital collections including varying opinions of certain bibliographic access points and visual representation.