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What We Know About User Behavior

What We Know About User Behavior. Carol Tenopir, University of Tennessee ctenopir@utk.edu. The Picture of our Users. Users of Digital Information. What we know about user behavior What we aren’t sure about What we might know in the future.

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What We Know About User Behavior

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  1. What We Know About User Behavior Carol Tenopir, University of Tennessee ctenopir@utk.edu

  2. The Picture of our Users

  3. Users of Digital Information • What we know about user behavior • What we aren’t sure about • What we might know in the future

  4. Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: An Overview and Analysis of Recent Research Studies www.clir.org/pub/reports/pub120/pub120.pdf

  5. Tier 1 Studies • SuperJournal • DFL/CLIR/Outsell • HighWire eJUST • Pew/OCLC-Harris/Urban Libraries Council • OhioLINK • Tenopir & King • LibQUAL+ • JSTOR

  6. Tier 2 Studies • Over 200 good studies in last decade • One time studies, or one organization, or small scale • Variety of methods • Together build our knowledge of user behavior

  7. Learning About Users and Usage Opinions, preferences (individual) Critical incident (readings), Experimental Usage logs

  8. Usage logs Interviews/surveys/ journals What groups do Opinion, what individuals say they do in general and why What individuals say they do specifically and why, readings What individuals do in a controlled setting and why What Conclusions Can You Draw? • Critical Incident • Experimental

  9. What We Know About Students • They turn to Internet search engines first (instead of formal electronic sources) • They feel confident about their searching ability • They recognize not all Internet information is reliable

  10. What We Know About Subject Experts • Use of electronic vs. print and use patterns depend on subject discipline • Read more and from a wider variety of sources than in the past • Experts both browse and search, but searching is increasing

  11. What We Know About All Users • Use some print in addition to electronic sources • Print things they want to spend time on • Adopt electronic resources that are convenient and support their natural workflow

  12. More Subtle Factors • Situational/Contextual (Purpose/motivation) • Individual Differences (Productivity, awards, degrees, etc.)

  13. Unanswered Questions: Is there a difference based on: • …gender? • …date of birth? • …culture and/or geographic location?

  14. Some Examples From T&K data • 18,000+ scientists and social scientists • 1977 to present • University and non-university workplaces • Mostly North America • Recent studies of Astronomers, Medical faculty, faculty and students at several universities

  15. Importance to Purpose • Subject experts use e-resources and read for many purposes—research and writing are ranked most important • Older articles (more than 1 year) are ranked higher than current articles • Articles from library collections (print or electronic) are ranked higher than others

  16. Individual Differences • No significant differences by year of last degree (derived age) for productive astronomers • Significant differences by derived age for non-productive astronomers • Significant differences by degree earned (medical faculty)

  17. Astronomy Articles Read per Month vs. Productivity

  18. Awareness and Use of ADSby Productive PhD Astronomers

  19. Awareness and Use of ADS by not-Productive PhD Astronomers

  20. Format of Reading

  21. Fundamental Questions • How much should we depend on designing systems for the “average”user in our user group? • Do we build for productive users? • How much do we build to individual differences? • Are the efforts to design customizable systems the answer?

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