ORGANIZATIONAL USABILITY OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES - CASE-STUDY OF LEGAL RESEARCH IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL COURTS

Digital Libraries (DLs) is a recent term used to refer to information systems (IS) and services that provide electronic documents-text files , digital sound, digital video-available in dynamic or archival reposi tories. Some insist that DLs refer to documentary collections that are accessed via the Internet, while others refer to DLs as any collectio n of electronic text, sound, or video files used in a shared space, Th ere is much at stake in these debates. If DLs are narrowly defined, th en we lose the ability to learn about key DL issues from previous rese arch, theory, and professional practice in IS and librarianship. We pr esent a case study of the use of legal research DLs (LRDLs) in the Cal ifornia Civil and Criminal Courts, We extend the concept of organizati on validity (Markus & Robey, 1983) in IS to that of organizational usa bility in LRDLs. The results suggest that points of access to LRDLs in fluence usage, that there is a strong interplay between home computer use and LRDL use at work, and that legal professionals prefer one-on-o ne assistance rather than group training. Conditions fostering organiz ationally unusable systems are presented based on empirical data.