The Absent User
27 Feb 09
Martell, Charles. “The Absent User: Physical Use of Academic Library Collections and Services Continues to Decline 1995–2006.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 34.5: 400-407.
Long story short: circulation counts, way down; reference transactions, way WAY down. Same here. Conclusions?
Clearly today’s users have substituted virtual use for in-person use. While they may be absent, they are not inactive. Networked electronic resources via library portals and the Internet have provided users with benefits that go far beyond anything available when physical use was the only alternative.
Librarians have coped successfully with the transition, as reported in several major user satisfaction surveys.* This is an extremely positive sign. It demonstrates that librarians have done that which was in their power to achieve. Keeping users tethered to the physical library was never a realistic option. Instead users engage in whatever strategy works best for them. This has resulted in fewer visits to the library and more use of networked resources for research, study, and teaching.
Trying to bring students back to the library in order to use the print collections may fail as a strategy if instructors do not require such use from their students or if online alternatives are available. Adding a café, art gallery, computer labs, classrooms, and other non-library services may increase gate counts but they are unlikely to influence circulation rates.
There is no end in sight to the declines in circulation and reference that many libraries are experiencing. This presents considerable difficulties for anyone who is attempting to justify a new building or an improved materials budget. In these situations it becomes necessary to demonstrate how monumental increases in the usage of electronic collections and services balanced with sound investments in the print collections will provide optimum benefits to students and faculty.
I wish this last point were better elaborated. Around here we’ve been talking about one justification for capital expenditures being in reconfiguring space precisely to meet changing patron behaviours and expanding service needs.
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* – Martell cites: Carol Tenopir, Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: An Overview and Analysis of Recent Research Studies (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, Aug. 2003). 72 pp. Available: http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub120abst.html (Dec. 26, 2007); Amy Friedlander, Dimensions and Use of the Scholarly Information Environment: Introduction to a Data Set Assembled by the Digital Library Federation and Outsell, Inc. (Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation and Council on Library and Information Resources, November 2002): 1–20. Available: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub110/contents.html (Dec. 24, 2007); College Students’ Perceptions of Library and Information Resources 2005: A Report to the OCLC Membership. Available: http://www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/studentperceptions_ part4.pdf (Dec. 26, 2007).
Posted by pzed on February 27, 2009 at 1.34pm
Will power
27 Feb 09
The SB Will is a ship in London that can be booked for private parties.
If cruising on the River Thames, the highlight of the trip is passing through Tower Bridge as it opens exclusively for your party – literally stopping the traffic.
Now there’s a selling point. “Look how terribly important we are, chaps, the Tower Bridge is opening exclusively for us! Pity the yobs who have to sit in traffic watching us cruise by. Ha ha.”
I heard about the SB Will from the Tower Bridge itself.
Posted by pzed on February 27, 2009 at 8.06am
“In tough times, creative pursuits stage a revival”
23 Feb 09
When all else fails, make art.
Housing prices, industries and morale are all sinking. But for some, the recession brings a rare moment of opportunity – the chance to bravely pursue a dream when there is nothing else to lose.
It’s too Monday morning to think about how this connects to the stuff I’ve been thinking about the last few days, except to say I think creativity in art must be both personal and social, and somewhere in there lies the connection to citizenship and cities and making things better.
Posted by pzed on February 23, 2009 at 10.00am
a more nuanced discussion of creative class
22 Feb 09
Yesterday’s post about joining the creative class was kind of meant as a joke, but kind of not. The amazingly successful pecha kucha night held at Artcite last Thursday (and organized by my hunny, Jodi Green) inspired me to start getting better connected to what’s going on in Windsor.
All the talks went really well, and the energy and excitement both in the gallery and at the after party were remarkable. Phog’s Tom Lucier taped and uploaded all six Pecha Kucha Windsor talks. Tom, also one of the presenters, subtitled his talk “Growing Windsor’s Creative Class”, and this expression, creative class, was picked up by others over the evening.
During the discussion afterwards, I was tempted to challenge everyone to think beyond the term “creative class”. It makes me uncomfortable, but at the time I couldn’t think how to articulate exactly why, and I’m still not entirely sure. It reminds me entirely too much of knowledge worker, but being a member of the creative class sounds so much less like being a line worker in the manufacture of “knowledge”.
Years ago, I read Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide through the American Status System (Leddy Library: HN90.S6 F87 1983), in which he lays out a persuasive statement of what is obvious to any non-America: that America has a well-defined and fairly rigid class structure. But he also posits the existence of an “X” class of people, usually either impoverished artists or wealthy drop-outs, who (sort of) live outside the class system. These are the Bohemians in Florida’s formulation of the creative class, but note that they make up a small minority. The majority of this creative class are defined by the nature of their contribution to the economy, mostly in the private sector. Which isn’t to say that creative economic activity isn’t what Windsor needs, lord knows we need all the economic activity we can get.
Thursday night a very diverse group of people were brought together by their love of this city (this polis). To me, the unifying theme of Pecha Kucha Windsor’s six talks turned out to be citizenship. What does it mean to be a part of a city, to love that city, to be hurt by that city; how can we make that city better, how can we get more people thinking about, talking about, and making the change we need; how do we encourage residents to interact with their city as active participants, as citizens, rather than as passive consumers of utilities and services? And how can we live up to that ideal ourselves?
Posted by pzed on February 22, 2009 at 1.22pm
try some SORBET!
21 Feb 09
Those who read Jodi will recognize my new theme (code name: SORBET!) has basically the same structural underpinnings as the theme we developed for her. Getting away from the gawdawful wordpress default theme has been a three-year procrastination for me, but no longer. Still some bugs to work out, older posts not formatting quite like newer ones probably because of changes in wordpress, for example. If anything looks funky to you please let me know.
Posted by pzed on February 21, 2009 at 8.17pm
how to join the creative class
21 Feb 09
Step one: Finally get around to adding links to your sidebar.
Step two: Start lurking hanging around with other creative types.
Step three: Reap the benefits of your new, creative lifestyle!
Posted by pzed on February 21, 2009 at 1.35pm
brain dump, or, what will we do with ourselves!?!
9 Feb 09
There’s an awful lot happening in my library, as in others. In my library it all seems to be happening at once. We’ve watched the tide of digital transformation coming in, and this looks like the year we need to learn to swim. We are dealing with budget cuts—realignments, as our Orwellian university administration insists on calling them—by attacking first our few remaining print serials. We’re seeing similar, though smaller, cuts to our print monographs budget. E-books are picking up, but haven’t yet replaced print as the preferred format for books. We do have to wonder if that won’t change in the near future.
At the same time, we’ve seen a collapse in our reference desk statistics. Use stats of titles in our reference collection have declined in an almost linear fashion. We’re looking at a revised policy document for reference that will, if passed, mean a formal recognition that the reference collection is primarily electronic.
Most of the librarians in my department base their work on a liaison model. We have subject specialties that derive from collections responsibilities, coupled with information literacy and specialized reference expectations. We work with faculty in our assigned departments, and we often say to students and faculty in those areas that we are “your librarian”. But we’re beginning to recognize that it doesn’t necessarily make sense for the liaison librarian to manage relatively insignificant print serials budgets or to spend time sitting on a reference desk that is almost always slow.
There’s the potential here to free up a lot of time. What are we going to do with ourselves? I do have a few ideas, and basically I’m just posting to get this bullet list out of my scribble book. What are some of the things we might be involved in?
- Information literacy
- Training (which is different) of staff, colleagues, perhaps faculty and students as well
- Collection and use analysis; the web generates tonnes of data
- public relations and marketing of library resources and services
- fundraising
- research, thinking, writing
That’s my first pass, I’m sure there’s more, and I’m sure these could be well articulated, but really this is a brain dump, so there it is.
Posted by pzed on February 9, 2009 at 11.25am
