Accessing and Using Digital Libraries in Art History

Over the past decades, the increase in the use of digital resources and the growth of research conducted in digital environments has transformed academic scholarship. The goal of this paper is to highlight the importance of understanding user behavior and needs for building digital libraries and resources that have a positive effect on the whole scholarly workflow. For this purpose, the art historical discipline will be used as a case study; by employing an ethnographic approach to the study of scholarly habits, we managed to uncover the requirements that scholars in the field have in terms of accessing and using digital libraries. The complex information behavior of art historians as well as the challenges they often face when interacting with digital resources make them a great example to demonstrate the impact that digital libraries and archives can have on the research process.