New: Digitization Projects: Europeana Publishes Results of Annual User Survey

From Europeana News:

The results of this year’s user survey are now available online. The survey ran in May 2011 and received over 5000 responses. Respondents say they find the content of Europeana more userful than on similar sites and far more trustworthy.

Read a Summary of the Results (PowerPoint)

Read the Complete Report (34 Pages; PDF)

From the Exec. Summary:

The most important reason given to visit Europeana is for personal research. Almost three-quarters of visitors visit for personal research activities and less than 20% visit for the next most popular reason – work-related research. These percentages were much the same for both the 2009 and 2011 online visitor surveys.

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Nearly 28% of respondents do not have a main/favourite site for the same use as Europeana.

Google and Google Books account for more than three quarters (77.3%) of responses from respondents with a main/favourite site used for the same purpose as Europeana.

Europeana´s trustworthiness of content, usefulness of content, general look and feel, and presentation of results are rated higher than the main/favourite competitor but ease of access of content, navigation round the site and search functions ratings for Europeana are lower than the main competitor.

Generally with respect to its main competitors Europeana is rated more highly by first time users than existing users.

Filed under: Digital Preservation, News, Patrons and Users