The Digital Information Seeker

I found this gem in American Libraries Direct. It is an OCLC synthesis of several studies on user behavior, specifically as it relates to using digital information and libraries. Although some of the studies were done with subjects from the general public, most of them were with academic subjects, undergraduates, graduate students and faculty at universities. The main points are summarized at the link, and you can read the entire synthesis here. The following conclusions jumped out at me, and I have added some of my own thoughts about them.

• Library Systems must be better at providing seamless access. You know as well as I do that patrons, especially students, do not have the patience to wait through the series of clicks it takes to get to most subscription databases. Some of them have tried to fix this problem with widgets, and federated searches, but you have to pay extra for the federated search, and it still may not include everything you need. Depending on what kind of web site you have and your access to writing it yourself, you may or may not be able to use the widget. Here's a thought. Stop so trying to protect your proprietary rights so hard. Make the interfaces more user friendly. Give us a federated search that will search your competitors, you know we subscribe to them, and give it to us for free with the contract. Subscription companies need to wake up and smell the coffee. Library budgets are shrinking. If users are not using their products because they are difficult to use, and our usage statistics will show us this, then libraries are going to --gasp--stop subscribing. Patrons want one stop shopping, and libraries need to figure out ways to give them something as close to that as possible. What about the open access movement in many academic libraries? Are vendors really paying attention?


• Library systems need to look and function more like search engines. One way that some people are trying to accomplish this is to add value to their PAC by adding digital content. A number of ILSs will allow this, and it is one way to help with above problem. In the absence of a really good federated search, this might be the option that works best, especially if it can be customized. often times, you can add items from your databases to the PAC. Then we can show patrons one interface and let them access everything. I don't think this is completely doable yet, however we could come pretty close, and it might help librarians improve their image a little.
• The library must advertise its brand, its value, and its resources better within the community. This one is key. Notice the emphasis is on the brand, the values, not the libarians' jobs. That is a mistake I think we often make. It cheapens us, it makes us sound like whiners, or worse, unionized workers who think that really, no one else can screw in a lightbulb (in our case, search online) without their help. Get real. If you want to keep your job, you need to do your job. Read this blog post, which contains a little message about that. Notice that the moms were advised NOT to bring Librarians to the capital. Ouch! Also, I am pretty sure that community is not referring to the "library community." That is another common mistake. We all tell each other about what we are doing. That's great, but we are going to have to do better, build relationships with people (stakeholders) outside the library world. Climbing off my soapbox now...

I will be adding more about marketing the library in future posts. Marketing and Branding are the subjects of a presentation I am preparing, so I will be doing a lot of thinking about that. After that look for a series on College Preparation, how librarians can fill the gap, and of course there will be a few books, both Professional and YA sprinkled in here and there.