Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton-Jan

2020 Vision Conference: Perceptions of Library Users

Alane Wilson

Another blogger here (Russet Vixen) has another summary, if you want a double-dose.

Wilson talked to us about the 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan.  She started by discussing the Amazoogle (as opposed to Googlezon) user environment.  Users consider this to be the first and last resort of research.  This is frustrating for libraries, because we know about subscription-level databases, etc. and those don’t show up.  However, Amazoogle provides information to users at their point of need–which is where we need to be.

She discussed the major problem in libraries about how we only speak to people who are using our services already, so therefore get skewed results.  Harris Interactive did this survey for OCLC, surveying over 3,000 people in various English-speaking countries.

Wilson discussed how it’s probably not a good idea to plan services for people who don’t have access to the web.  That is planning for the now, not the future.  That’s not to say we should ignore these users, but for planning purposes, we need to presume connectivity.

Some results highlights (I hope I got the numbers all right):

• Over 50% of respondents use online news, IM, search engines, and e-mail.
• 1% of respondents said they use a library’s website for information searches.  (we have clearly lost the battle against search engines–let’s stop fighting)
• People find new websites through friends, links, and media routinely, but rarely through library websites or library staff (only 8-15% of them do that)
• People read the newspaper less, listen to the radio less, watch TV less, etc. due to Internet use, but Wilson posits that some of these activities may have simply moved to the web in the form of online media.
• 54% of people who use the library use it for checking our print books, and 33% use it for subscription databases.
• 40% of college student respondents knew that libraries have websites, but thought that other websites have better information.  She says this may because much of our information is not conveniently available (buried in dozens of different databases, requiring passwords, and not available immediately in full text).
• 76% of respondents had sought the assistance of a librarian in person.
• 64% of respondents never asked for help when using the library’s e-resources.
• About 90% of people are satistifed with the information they get from search engines.  The number is the same for librarians.  Hmm.  No differentiation between the two.
• When asked for what they think about when they think of libraries, 69% of respondents said "books."  That’s our brand, whether we like it or not.
• Only 2% of respondents said libraries were trusted sources for information.
• 85% said that they think of the library as a place to learn, above all else.
• Many respondents, in the free-text portion, complained about staff unfriendliness, a lack of space to do the things they want to do, and a feeling that the staff feel put-upon when asked for assistance.
• Wilson noted that we serve young families well and schoolchildren (to an extent), but ignore digital natives, homebound users, single adults, techies.  We’re ignoring huge amounts of users who are telling us that they have fond memories of using the library as kids, but say there’s nothing there for them any more.

Wilson then talked about branding.  Brand is a combination of differentiation (the degree to which we stand out) and relevance (to what degree are we useful to people).  Our brand is "books," but our brand potential is "learning."  It takes a long time for a group or company to re-brand.