Day 2 - 5th December 2007

5/12/07 - Tools and EResources for the Librarian

Carol Tenopir and David Nicholas
What does usage data tell us about our users?
This presentation was very data-rich and you need to read the paper and/or powerpoint to ready do it justice. The first part of the presentation looked at the longitudinal study (over 30 years) carried out by Carol Tenopir and her team, which looks at not only the journal articles which are photocopied and downloaded, but what they do with them next. David Nicholas talked about deep-log analysis, which provides data on how users interact with e-journal databases.

Interesting fact: Statistics taken been 2004-2006 from academics and students at universities in the USA and Australia as part of this study found that:

77% of under 30 year olds prefer to print out rather than read from the screen
83% of over 60 year olds prefer to print out rather than read from the screen

It looks like the majority (regardless of age) still prefer to do concentrated reading from paper documents rather than on screen.


(Full paper available in the conference proceedings)

Also see:
Nicholas, David and Jamali, Hamid, R. Diversity in the Information Seeking Behaviour of the Virtual Scholar: Institutional Comparisons. Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2007, pp.629-638.

Ian Rowlands
How the “Google Generation” searches or information and the implications for research collections.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a copy of this presentation in the conference proceedings nor did a powerpoint presentation accompany Ian Rowlands talk, apologies to colleagues who I know were very interested in this presentation. However, the research discussed will soon be disseminated to the community via the normal channels. Further information can be found at http://www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour.html

Rowlands defined the “Google generation” as anyone born after 1993, and who has grown-up with computers and doesn’t have a memory of life before the internet. The research (which was funded by the British Library) aims to anticipate the needs of the Google generation between 2012-2017.

See Also: Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2007. For other articles of relevance.