- How will technological trends change the information environment and user behaviours? How can libraries meet the challenges?
- There will be less need for mediated services as users will be able to do more for themselves
- 24/7 access has created a climate where the immediacy of information provision is considered necessary; there is a trade-off between the credibility & validity of information against the quality assured information that libraries have emphasised
- Users are able to tag/index and create their own information resources, this impacts upon the sustainability of the resources and any archives and also reduces the likelihood of retrieving the information across a wider audience
- The collaborative environment of Web 2.0, with users providing feedback, will impact on service provision
Libraries can meet the challenges by:
- Being more proactive and engaging with users and the new technologies
- Undertaking training to equip ourselves better to put into practice some of the new tools
- Carry out more marketing to see what services users & non-users need
2. What are the implications of the technoloigical trends on information literacy? How can libraries meet the challenges?
I agree with other comments, that the difficulty for libraries in the NHS , will be to continue to accommodate the needs the large majority of information illiterate in our Trusts alongside an increasingly capable minority who are information literate, without losing the confidence of either group. Perhaps other Trusts have variations in which group is in the majority, but I believe the problem remains the same.
Libraries can meet the challenges by offering a wider range of training opportunities to help familiarise the information illiterate with some of the new services. Libraries can also utilise some of the new technologies to help users become familiar with the new tools and help by offering ideas about what might be useful in a work context.
3 comments:
I agree with your point about training ourselves to use the new technology and become more familiar with it, Gwen, but I also think it offers an opportunity to work alongside other departments, like IT and to share the load of training and enabling users. We might get more co-operation from them with things like firewalls etc
I'm pleased that you pointed out that users will be information consumers AND creators, and the collaborative environment of W2 will impact on service provision. How should libraries address these issues, apart from providing training on information literacy? How should libraries capture harness the knowledge generated from the user communities?
I very much agree with your comment Gwen about libraries meeting the challenge by 'carrying out more marketing to see what services users and non-users need'.
Research into user behaviour would seem key in the success of many of the Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 technologies. How would smaller libraries rise to this challenge though? Perhaps more co-operation is warranted (by the use of social networking sites) - could a group of libraries serving similar populations collaborate on this, in order to prevent duplication?
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