The project is to host a conference to provide a forum on user centered evaluation for people involved in the creation or management of digital libraries of all kinds. The impetus for the conference arose from the desire of sponsors and awardees associated with the six NSF/ARPA/NASA Digital Library Initiative (DLI) projects to improve the effectiveness of the evaluation programs associated with the projects. At the first joint meeting of project participants, the Evaluation Working Group recommended organizing a conference such as that described here. Upon further discussion, that recommendation gained the support of DLI participants and sponsors, and led to this proposal. There is the need for a methodological plenary of those involved in digital library projects. It is beneficial to find out how others are collecting and analyzing data, framing problems, what is working and what has proved to be a dead end. It is important to gather together people for such a conference just as major digital library initiatives are getting underway; because of the interdisciplinary nature of the work no regula rly scheduled scholarly conference specifically focusses on usage in this way.
