The Library in the Life of the User: Engaging with People Where They Live and Learn

The contributions in this volume represent a decade of OCLC's user behavior research findings that articulate the need for the design of future library services to be all about the user. Highlights include: (1) People associate the library with books and do not consider the library in relation to online resources or reference services; (2) People may not think of using libraries to get their information because they do not know that the services exist and some of the existing services are not familiar or do not fit into their workflows; (3) The context and situation of the information need often dictates how people behave and engage with technology; and (4) Engagement and relationship building in both the online and physical environments is important for the development of successful and effective services. This compilation includes: (1) Reordering Ranganathan: Shifting User Behaviours, Shifting Priorities (Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Ixchel M. Faniel); (2) What is Enough? Satisficing Information Needs (Chandra Prabha, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Lawrence Olszewski, and Lillie Jenkins); (3) "Screenagers" and Live Chat Reference: Living Up to the Promise (Marie L. Radford and Lynn Silipigni Connaway); (4) Sense-Making and Synchronicity: Information-Seeking Behaviors of Millennials and Baby Boomers (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Marie L. Radford, Timothy J. Dickey, Jocelyn De Angelis Williams and Patrick Confer); (5) The Digital Information Seeker: Report of Findings from Selected OCLC, RIN and JISC User Behaviour Projects (Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Timothy J. Dickey); (6) "If it is too inconvenient I'm not going after it": Convenience as a Critical Factor in Information-Seeking Behaviors (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Timothy J. Dickey and Marie L. Radford); (7) User-Centered Decision Making: A New Model for Developing Academic Library Services and Systems (Silipigni Connaway, Donna Lanclos, David White, Alison Le Cornu and Erin M. Hood); (8) Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment? (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, David White, Donna Lanclos and Alison Le Cornu); (9) "I always stick with the first thing that comes up on Google. . ." Where People Go for Information, What They Use, and Why (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Donna M. Lanclos and Erin M. Hood); and (10) Meeting the Expectations of the Community: The Engagement-Centered Library (Lynn Silipigni Connaway). (Individual contributions contain references.) [The research represented in this compilation was made possible by several strategic partnerships as well as funding for several of the projects by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), in collaboration with The Ohio State University and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and with Jisc, in collaboration with Oxford University and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.]