Digital libraries, e-journal platforms, portals, e-prints and other web-based information systems provide services supporting users to perform intense work tasks that require complex interaction activities. The main components of such services are the users, the offered content and the system on which they are performed. This paper presents a model, which analyses the attributes of the electronic information services' components that affect user interaction and correlates them in the usefulness and usability evaluation process. An experimental study traces the relations between usefulness and usability, indicating that these evaluation parameters are interconnected and users do not find discriminating differences between them. The analysis of the content and system attributes suggests that user interaction is affected equally by content and system characteristics. Finally, the study illustrates users' preference for the attributes that constitute a useful system in contrast to those that support usability.

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives, and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades have become ever more collaborative, distributed, and data intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organization, analysis, and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access, and (re)use have lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE, the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EU-funded network has developed an e-infrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access, and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realize. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users’ expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the e-infrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery, and access), and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarizes lessons learned and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in the sharing of data through ARIADNE.