Reordering Ranganathan: Shifting User Behaviors, Shifting Priorities

This report suggests that Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan's "Five Laws of Library Science" can be reordered and reinterpreted to reflect today's library resources and services, as well as the behaviors that people demonstrate when engaging with them. Although authors Senior Research Scientist Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Associate Research Scientist Ixchel Faniel believe Ranganathan's five laws are still relevant today, their intent is to help evolve both the work done by librarians and the perceptions of libraries and librarians. By changing how one thinks about the five laws in terms of interpretation and order of importance, Connaway and Faniel hope to reflect the current resources and services available for use and the behaviors that people demonstrate when engaging with them. Their objective is to provide a timely and relevant context for Ranganathan's laws that today's librarians, library researchers and information scientists can refer to as they think about making changes in practice and developing agendas for future research. This work is an output of the OCLC Research User Behavior Studies & Synthesis theme, which centers on how users engage with technology and content.