Some random thoughts about CiL so far:
I'm most struck by how half of the presenters present or quote research that shows that users turn to the library and library websites first to start research or look for information. The other half cite research that shows exactly the opposite - people turn to Google first.
I note that so far, those who cite research that shows that users don't turn to the library aren't doing the research themselves, just quoting others. Those doing their own research - and in both cases I've seen this they took great pains to disguise that the questions were coming from the library (in one case) or a database company (in the other case) - found that the library is a primary starting point.
One of the presenters found out through follow-ups to their study that for research questions, people turned to the library, while for quick-answer look-ups, they turned to Google. He hypothesizes that this is what's producing the results in other studies that claim people turn to Google first - they do, but only when they're looking for something specific, like a definition of a term, or a quick overview of a subject.
That tends to make sense to me. However, I'd like to find out how our users begin their research, and want to run a survey on this. I think that'll give us a better idea of which way to go when redesigning the site.
One thing that everyone agrees on is that awareness - making students and other patrons aware of what's out there to help them - is the key point. The ProQuest guy who talked about their study (I'll write it up later) told a story about one of their sbjects. They observed a number of students for 1.5 hours each as they did research for a paper. This kid was the poster child for database use. He went to the database page on his university library's website and went through every single atabase relevant to his topic. When asked why he did this, he gave a speech about how many resources were available and how useful they were, etc. When asked how long he'd been researching this way, he replied "Six weeks." Why the change six weeks ago? He said that a librarian had come to one of his classes and told them that and showed them how to do it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Very insightful and will definitely help you with the site redesign. I know that's how I do my searching...things I know I can find better using our databases, I start there. Things I know Google will do, that's where I start. It just depends on what I need. I'm still waiting for database interfaces to finally catch on that users need "ease of use" (Hello LexisNexis!). Grove Music finally figured it out and redesigned theirs. Only took 8 years...
Oh - something that made me think of the Music Library - the Delft library has these pods - they're chairs a lot like the 70s egg chairs that have speakers and an attachment with a screen - patrons can use them to listen to music or watch movies. :D
Yeah, I'm thinking about more comfortable seating the next time around for the A/V Center. What we have gets hard on the butt for 2 hour (or more) flicks.
ooooo.... egg chairs! WANT!
You can see the Delft Public Library pod chairs here.
neat! I'd rather they were round in back - but I can see that that would take up a lot of space
Post a Comment