Social Digital Libraries: Their Roles Within and Across Social Worlds, Information Worlds, and Communities

There is continuing need for theoretical and practical research to consider the roles that digital libraries play in collaboration, communities, and other social contexts. My dissertation research looks to help fulfill this need, examining the roles digital libraries play, as boundary objects, within and across social worlds, information worlds, and communities. In this paper, I review related literature, present my research questions, and discuss my use of content analysis, surveys, and interviews to study the roles played by the LibraryThing and Goodreads digital libraries within and across communities. I also explain the expected benefits and contributions of my dissertation research and present brief, initial findings from the content analysis.

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