User Research
Libraries are impacted by the ways in which individuals engage with technology; how they seek, access, contribute, and use information; and how and why they demonstrate these behaviors and do what they do. We're collaborating with librarians to shape their services around a set of expectations that have been influenced by consumer technologies and modern research and learning environments. By providing the library community with behavioral evidence about individuals’ perceptions, habits, and requirements, we can ensure that the design of future library services is all about the user. Our efforts are amplified by strategic partnerships and focus in these two areas:
Embedding the library in community workflows
Understanding the needs of current and potential users, characterizing and evaluating the digital services libraries provide them, and proposing changes that will deliver library services where people do their work.
Recent work:
“People Are Reading Your Work”: Scholarly Identity and Social Networking Sites
Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN)
Shaping the Library to the Life of the User: Adapting, Empowering, Partnering, Engaging
Engaging individuals in context
Understanding what motivates individuals to engage in information environments, defining the expectations researchers have in these environments, and proposing library responses to connect them to library services.
Recent work:
The Many Faces of Digital Visitors and Residents: Facets of Online Engagement
Digital Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?