Digital Environment:

Users Empowered and Librarians

Deserted

M S Sridhar
mirlesridhar@gmail.com

1 February 2011
Karnataka State Library Association
 Synopsis
1. Features of digital content
2. Characteristics of digital era
3. Need for digital information user studies
4. What to understand?
5. Digital environment: implications, threats,
and opportunities
6. Some findings on digital information users
7. Repositioning alternatives for the profession
8. Conclusion: future libraries and librarians

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 Features of Digital Content
1. Content boom or Information plethora
2. Economical multiple pointers
3. Location independence
4. Manipulation of contents
5. Quality is patchy and often unknown
6. Everything is meta data
7. Dynamic nature
8. Interactivity
9. More non-textual and image based content
10. Diminished demarcation between published
and unpublished
11. More user created and organized
12. Greatly facilitate sharing and collaboration
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 Characteristics of Digital Era
1. Users think they don‟t need intermediaries
2. More and more users are becoming producers
3. Linguistic whateverism
4. World of Alitracy
5. Moving from text-based to image-based society
6. Technically complex & heterogeneous services
7. Need to provide less rather than more
8. Work & home are mixed with digital nomads
9. Digital natives and immigrants discontinuity
10.Pervasive and universal access
11.Open dissemination, increased web citations
12.Brought
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people virtually closer
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 Implications of Digital Environment on
Libraries
1. No more prominent players in information
provision and management
2. Lost reference service and archival functions
3. Filtering responsibility shifted to users
4. Users snatched control of organization of
information
5. Access and convenience over ride validity
and quality
6. Cheap and easy digitization expanded the
reach and also brought some use for
traditionally less used content

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 Implications on Libraries …contd.
7. Self-searching and relying on SEs replaced
delegated searching and relying on library
8. Users confused by variety of platforms; try trial
and error mode
9. Self-evaluation is a key element of digital
literacy
10. Online catalogs are to access specific items
rather than IR; OPAC expected to have links to
online contents
11. Increase collections, enhance content and
functionality; improve usability; list libraries
that own an item
12. Access management with risk tolerance for
litigation Digital environment: users empowered and librarians deserted
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 Digital Environment Opportunities
1. Technology encouraged and acted as
catalyst for the trio factors:
 Accessibility
 Ease of use and
 Perceived utility of information
2. Made wisdom of crowd available
3. Enabled Mobile-based services
4. New technologies brought new competitors
5. Managing information for business benefits
 Fee based services
 Public-private partnership
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 Opportunity to Understand Digital
Information Users
1. Logs („foot prints‟) of what users have done
2. Enable monitoring users & deep log analysis
3. Mines of robust quantitative/ statistical data
4. Evidence base can be developed on virtual
scholars
5. Enables learning and developing intelligent
agents
6. Navigation is the clue
7. Wider sphere of operation for librarianship

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 Dehumanization Threat
1. Physically inhabited, psychologically absent
2. No „natural‟ ways of accessing with all senses
3. Physical propinquity is the powerful force of
innovation
4. Often, text is separated from context
5. Anytime any place office is the tiger cage of
every time every where with permanently
anxiousness
6. No time to think and care, concentrate on
speed alone

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 Access Barriers
1. Alphabetization barrier replaced by need for
consumption skills
2. Too many complex strategies &
terminologies
3. Access, use and usefulness are mixed up
4. New excess and silliness with their own
backlash

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 Access to Excess and Multitude of
Choices
1. Effect of small amount of choices vs. large
amount of choices on user and his
satisfaction/ success need to be understood
2. Abundance of choice attracts users, but it is
not to their advantage
3. When options are few, user can be happy
with what he chooses confidently
4. Only small number of choices can be easily
handled and evaluated by users

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 Access to Excess and Multitude of
Choices
5. If user is looking for a specific item,
evaluating, deciding and laying hands
become easy
6. To handle multitude of choices, users are
expected to develop domain expertise
7. Users are normally aware of the positive
effects of choice, but not harm of negative
ones caused by too much choice

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Need for Understanding Digital Information
Users
• Huge number of users migrated to digital
world
• Librarians know less about them:
“ …the information community must stop
thinking it knows best, otherwise it will be in
danger of becoming irrelevant. The consumer
knows best”

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 Digital user perception of library
1. Libraries viewed as being books
2. Sharp fall in researchers‟ visit to libraries
3. Researchers retain a sense of importance of
the library
4. Those who visit library continue to
experience satisfaction
5. Users value traditional browsing, praise
library as space for information
6. For students, the most common activity in the
physical library is to do homework/ study
7. Considered key player in the market for e-
books
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Some Findings on Digital Environment/ User
1. Digital information is popular and has
increased demand
2. Diverse set of users
3. Huge volatility & use variety of sources with
no Loyalty, Trust, Branding and Repeat
behavior (Return visits)
4. Read shorter articles online („digital
osmosis‟)
5. Expect instant gratification with just enough
attitude
6. Self judge authenticity and relevance
7. Increased use of older material
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 General Findings on Digital User
1. Speed, simplicity, immediate access/ answer,
instant gratification, and convenience are
important
2. Prefer everything available in digital form in
quick chunks/ snippets of information
3. Shorter sessions - Very little time using the
content
4. Increased centrality (use, familiarity & trust)
of Google and other search engines
5. D2D Process is crucial
6. Look for easy interface
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 General Findings on Digital User
7. No site penetration; „Bouncing‟ or „Flicking‟
with „shallow searching‟ and „promiscuity‟
8. Gathering information horizontally rather than
vertically
9. Problem of irrelevant results and fear of
missing items
10. Prefer natural language searching with one
or two terms
11. Advanced search tools are largely ignored
12. Growth in searching at the cost of browsing
13. Asking colleagues is still an important
strategy
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 Confidence, Skill & Quality Judgment of
Digital Information Users
1. Determine quality based on own experience and
common sense
2. Students assess contents based on its
relevance to their assignment
3. They are confident of their self-taught skills and
satisfied with the result
4. Feel results are same as that of what libraries
provide
5. Getting an answer is cited as the success
6. Over estimates ability (students) and give up
after initial search
7. But, there is big gap between performance and
self-estimates
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 New Values of Digital Information Users
1. Weighs convenience as more important than
quality
2. Needs just enough to do the task on hand
3. Wants to follow the path of cheap, fast and
good
4. Expects wide choice as well as selectivity
5. Expects both information and technology to
be mobile
6. Believes if it is not on the web, it just does
not exist

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 Cognitive Behavior of (Student) Users
Access to full text caused and lead to:
1. Believe that no need to read thoroughly for
ideas and themes
2. Believe notes are no longer required
3. Increased plagiarism
4. Going online to avoid reading
5. Speed and simplicity over rule everything
else

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 Digital user perception of e-books
1. Reported significant technical difficulties
2. Convenience is a major factor in usage
3. Students preferred using off-campus
4. Used to get snippets of information with very
little extended reading
5. Do not spend much time in the book, but use
then to quickly find facts, viewing only a few
pages (85% spent less than 1 m viewing a
page)
6. E-availability did not significantly reduce print
circulation

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 Digital user perception of e-Journals
1. Give increased importance
2. Consider „critical part‟ of current research
climate
3. Article downloads has doubled between
2001/3 to 2007
4. Little time is spent using the content
5. Ignore publishers‟ platform (to discover)
6. Felt problems in accessing identified
material
7. Libraries need to increase access to open
source materials, repositories and back files
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 Scholarly reading of e-Journals
• No. of journals increased by 3% and no. of
articles by 3.5% (1986 – 2004)
• Average length of article increased from 7.4p
to 12.4p and size of journal itself increased
from 820p to 2216p per annum
1. Average number of journal articles read per
year increased
2. Average time spent reading journal article
reduced
 Thoroughness of reading sacrificed for
quantity? Or reading only shorter articles/
abstract online („digital osmosis‟)
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 Alternatives for repositioning the
profession
1. The invisible Intermediary
2. The proactive Librarian
3. The embedded Librarian
4. Aligning with or move to Information
provider Institutions
…more rehabilitation options

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 The Invisible Intermediary

1. An ICT based „digital library‟

2. Disintermediated services
3. Meeting both legacy of the past and the
promise of the future
4. Facilitate meaningful interactions
5. „Smoothening the way‟ for the users
6. Commercial intermediaries/ e-providers are
already doing

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 The Proactive Librarian

1. Learns the users‟ language

2. Understands their concerns
3. Becomes part of the team
4. Offers solutions before they are requested
5. An acknowledged expert in handling
information
6. Believes in libraries as agencies of
civilization and progress

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 The Embedded Librarian
1. Participates in academic courses
2. Teaches information literacy skills
3. His office will be in customer group
4. Works closely with the group members
5. Funding and supervision differ
6. Sound in librarianship and subject matter
7. Extensive informal education & practical
experience
8. Provides complex, value-added services
9. Collaborates/ contributes to group's work
10. Employer supported continuing education/
continuous learning across the board
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 Align with or move to information
provider institutions
• Disintermediation at two levels:
 Need for Librarian to access and use
resources
 Library as information delivery channel
• Librarian is definitely required as long as
dominance of „print „ exists
• As more content becomes digital, the
Librarian's role will be limited to license
manager
• Librarian will continue to be needed in user
institutions as long as the 'paid' content exist
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 Conclusion: Future librarians
1. Multi-faceted professional competence
2. Information literacy training
3. Taking care of internally generated born-
digital content
4. „Future is digital, digitize and democratize‟
with a collection development policy
5. Go behind market
6. Become academic partner and not servant
7. Meet diverse needs of users with vital
services for the colony
8. Show innovation to bring opportunity
9. Repackage products and services in a way to
deliver unique
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experiences
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 Conclusion: Future Libraries
1. Interactive catalogs accessible on multiple
devices
2. Replace lending with downloadable books
3. Space imaging technologies
4. Search Command Center
5. A refuge from the isolation of house
6. A temporary office space
7. The interface between information and brains
as seamless and invisible as possible
8. Mini-theaters to offer full sensory experience
9. Time Capsule Room
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