Programme group: Meeting the User
Chairwoman Tina Pipa
This is the programme group between user and product. An attempt has been made to move focus from library logic to user logic. The programme group prioritizes knowledge about users in order for the libraries of the future to be able to deliver information and service in a way that appears to have been integrated in a meaningful way with the systems that the users apply. The programme group has chosen to pursue seven programme items:
Users, collaboration with users, information supply, information literacy, e-learning, experiments with new communication forms and platforms, and marketing. Finally the members have tried to work in a process-oriented and knowledge-sharing way, with focus on development fuelled by members of staff.
Activities
The programme area’s relatively high process- orientation has i.a. resulted in a number of meetings, courses and publications. The following projects were completed in 2008:
UBtesten.dk
UBtesten.dk has now been translated into English and is available at www.librarytest.dk
stopplagiat.nu
www.stopplagiat.nu just arrived on the net when it was immediately requested to be translated into English. The project is very successful, also featuring a number of interactive exercises. The heavy usage is due not least to solid anchorage with teachers and directors of studies, as well as a very broad group of research libraries as the project group itself was made up of the Danish Research Library Association’s Forum for User Education.
Moving images
Moving images are available on www.bibfilm.dk. Here you can find generic experiments with video on the net as an example of the marketing tool of the future. There are three types of films with i.a. a very impressive number of ’university stars’ who are advocating the library as knowledge resource and study stimulation.
Integrated search
A usability analysis has been conducted of one of the major integrated search systems (Primo). Here, too, the emphasis has been on extracting the general learning, and recordings of the user meeting have been placed on the programme group’s wiki. As a small concrete example of the importance of user dialogue it showed that the user group in question preferred the option for tagging the library’s materials to be called not ’tag’, but the Users’ ’subject word’. This was a way of making the service comprehensible and relevant for them in a study context, as opposed to e.g. in a more recreational social context like on face book.
Explorative searches
The last project of the period has just been launched. A preliminary investigation into explorative searches. An exciting project which will develop the library’s role in information search.
The programme group has continued to focus on mediation – resulting i.a. in a couple of international visits with presentation of Danish Library e-learning – and with focus on marketing to end-users being maintained. Some very useful experiences with merchandise as ’attention catchers’ have been gathered.
Altogether it is characteristic of the projects under the programme group that they are relatively small and cheap projects, which fulfil a need on behalf of the user, have been carried out in cooperation with users, create attention and are immediately applicable!
The future is already upon us
The programme group has been asked to stay on for another period and has spent some of 2008 in dialogue with the DEFF secretariat, steering committee and the international review panel on which changes the programme group desires in order to secure optimal usefulness.
The programme area’s action plan is ready, and it will to an even greater degree deal with methods for the charting of user behaviour and needs and specifically on how to exploit the potential in web 2.0 for the DEFF libraries.
Read more at https://inforshare.dtv.dk/twiki/bin/ view/MoedetMedBrugeren/WebHome
This page forms part of the publication 'Annual report from Denmark’s Electronic Research Library 2008' as chapter 8 of 17
PrintPublication may be found at the address http://www.bibliotekogmedier.dk/fileadmin/publikationer/publikationer_engelske/deff/annualreport_2008/index.htm
© 2009