David Nicholas Digital Consumers Implications For Libraries
- 1. consumers: Digital consumers: implications for libraries (and society) Professor David Nicholas CIBER research group University College London [email protected] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber
- 2. Background: choice and change • Choice, digital transition, unbelievable access, Google & disintermediation transformed information landscape • Because so much information seeking goes on remotely and anonymously we have not woken up to this yet. Yet digital transition has further to go • Still working on the basis of old paradigm – risk of decoupling • Keep looking at the future, and blaming the kids…dumbing down dumbing
- 3. What have we learnt? • Seven years of building an evidence base from the digital footprints people leave behind • What people do and not what they say they do • And what they do follows….
- 4. Tremendous activity and going up and up • Access main driver. More people drawn into information net (all librarians now!) & existing users can search more freely & flexibly. • Lots of ‘noise’, which unfortunately regarded as demand & satisfaction. – majority of users robots (HofC) – of human users many are ‘foreign’ foreign’ – all have very short attention spans • They do it all the time - use well into the night and over the weekend
- 5. Consumers like it simple • Users avoid carefully-crafted discovery systems. Everyone likes Google – Physicists and Historians, included. • Advanced search used rarely, and hardly at all by users in highly-rated research institutions. • Add-ons and innovations distinctly a minority sport – email alerts, VLEs, blogs. And as for federated searching forget it!
- 6. They are promiscuous • Around 40% do not come back • Choice, shop around, lured away be search engines • Poor retrieval skills (2.3words) and leave memories in cyberspace add to ‘churn’ rate • Direct result of end-user checking • Younger they are the more promiscuous they are; men more promiscuous than women!
- 7. They bounce • Over half visitors view 1-3 pages from thousands available. Bounce in and then out again – related to promiscuity. • Bounce because of search engines, massive choice, an ‘acceptance of failure’ - shortage of time & overload • Bouncing not always a sign of failure but can be • Younger people bounce more
- 8. The horizontal has replaced the vertical Promiscuity and bouncing creates flicking. Victoria! Hoover through titles, contents pages & abstracts at a huge rate and its pleasurable: • I can update my knowledge very quickly…the sheer number of books is overwhelming, if I can look at them very quickly – you know within 15 mins, I can look at 3 or 4 books – and get some very superficial knowledge of what is in them, nevertheless it improves my scholarship, because in the back of my mind, these books already exist
- 9. Viewing has replaced reading • Power browsing • Have been conditioned by emailing, text messaging and PowerPoint • Don’t view an article online for more than 2-3 minutes • If its long, either read the abstract or squirrel it away for a day when it will not be read (digital osmosis) • Go online to avoid reading!
- 10. Consumers want ‘immersive’ social information environments • Social networking starts at home! • Returned book trolley!
- 11. Brand is more complicated than you think • Difficult in cyberspace: responsibility/authority almost impossible in a digital environment – so many players, so many brands • Do librarians have brand or authority? • Also what you think is brand is not what other people think. Tesco!
- 12. So what does it all mean? • The study confirms what many are beginning to suspect: that the web is having a profound impact on how we conceptualise, seek, evaluate and use information. What Marshall McLuhan called 'the Gutenberg galaxy' - that universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study - is imploding, and we don't know if what will replace it will be better or worse. But at least you can find the Wikipedia entry for 'Gutenberg galaxy' in 0.34 seconds
- 13. Conclusion • Was it always so and worked with the wrong (ideal) models? • We are all the Google Generation • Fast information for a fast food generation • ‘I’ information rather then ‘peer’ information • Understanding information seeking a prerequisite to determining outcomes…access is not an outcome • Are we really benefiting from the information society and always on. Fast forwarding the e-citizen to what? • And whose responsibility – libraries decoupling and publishers the new librarians?
- 14. Plug for the book of the PowerPoint •http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/index.shtml
- 15. Plug for the television programme! • BBC 2 Digital Revolution. Filming at UCL on 14th November. On the box in January and on the web at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/