RSS feedsThis collection of articles, edited by members of the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER), begins by berating its intended audience.
Information professionals are “insular and tribal”, complain the authors, and “have been bleating on about ‘users’ since time immemorial but they have not really made that much progress in understanding them”.
And it doesn’t stop there: “Too many people are still attempting to defend traditional turf or territory and an obsolete information paradigm. Unfortunately, the majority belong to the library profession.”
The closing chapter is no less fierce: “The information community must stop thinking it knows best, otherwise it will be in danger of becoming irrelevant.”
This is unfair: no one likes change, and information professionals have done a good job of adapting to circumstances, all things considered. But don’t let the introduction’s tone put you off: there is plenty to interest and challenge outside of the harsh words of the opening and closing chapters.
Each chapter takes a look at different aspects of internet use, and at the lessons information professionals can draw from it. The most interesting contribution reports on CIBER research into how people use scholarly journal resources such as Oxford Scholarship Online or Science Direct. The authors analyse the digital footprints that visitors to such sites leave behind: the search terms they enter, the amount of time they spend looking for articles, the number they download, and so on.
Users, it turns out, do not spend hours studying individual articles. Instead, the typical user enters a search term into Google, bypasses the homepage, “bounces” around looking for interesting content, scans contents and abstract pages, and then departs a few minutes later. Librarians and publishers, the authors say, should take note: “much content will be seldom or never used, other than, maybe, as a place from which to bounce”.
Another chapter takes apart the myths about the Google generation, most notably the assumption that young people are more digitally-savvy than older people. In fact, the authors say, the differences are small, and many young people lack sophisticated information literacy skills.
Contributor Chris Russell argues provocatively that users seeking information online have similar expectations to those shopping online. They want “ease of finding products with efficient and common search methodologies” and “easy-to-use registration and application forms”.
The book concludes with some useful, if hectoring, take-home points.
There is a good deal of valuable information and advice in this book. But if you’re feeling fragile, leave the introduction for another day.
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