The Future of Librarianship: Information Literacy, Usage and Engaging Your Users

The Future of Librarianship

Kate ShanahanRegional Marketing Executive, EMEA

Information literacy, usage and engaging your users

Regional Marketing

Support libraries globally to

• Promote their purchased content• Engage users• Access product training • Co-host library and researcher events• Collaborate on conference papers• And much more!

Overview• Information literacy

• Maximising usage

• Engaging your users

• How Taylor & Francis can help

Information Literacy

• Locate

• Evaluate

• Manage and share findings

Locating content Education on where to look for content Collaborative approach to collection

development Subject-specific libguides

Subject librarian

Acquisition / e-resource

librarian

Student

FacultyLibrary content

Evaluating content Educating faculty and students

Understanding quality

Library & faculty working collaboratively

Building relationships

Integrating the library with academic programmes

Facilitating access to free content

Facilitating access to free content

• Growth and value of content- Free resources add value!

• Identification and selection of content- growing volume of material a challenge

• Resource challenges for libraries- librarians have a limited human resource

“Our main challenge is human resources for selection decisions.” - Technical Services Librarian, USA

Facilitating access to free content

• Library role- Librarians’ role needs better promotion

• Users’ needs and expectations- Library systems need to become faster

Do you have a process for facilitating access to free content in your library?

Facilitating access to free content

Facilitating access to free content

Maximising usage

• Move from print to electronic

• Digitising archival content

• ‘Open’ content

• Mobile access

• Social media

There has been many changes to the academic library landscape! How has this impacted you?

• Discoverability

• Accessibility

• Promoting your content through the ‘right’ channels - where can you most effectively engage with your users?

Maximising usage

Mobile use

1% 6%1%

7%

17%

37%

31%

Approximately, how often do you use a mobile device for academic scholarly content:

Never

Less than once a month

Once a month

Two or three times a month

Once a week

Several times a week

Every day

Do you have a mobile strategy in your library?

24/7 access to content

2% 3%

16%

39%

39%

Please state how important is it for you to access your institutional library holdings offsite on a mobile device:

Not at all importantLow importanceAverageHigh importanceExtremely important

“Having access to content outside the library creates more time for browsing and finding relevant information for research and teaching. If I see an article that relates to the content that I have taught, I can instantly share it with my classes.”

Searc

hing for a

cadem

ic sch

olarly

conten

t

Reading o

nline j

ournal

article

s

Downloading a

cadem

ic sch

olarly

conten

t to be r

ead la

ter

For r

eading l

ists

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

What do you use your mobile device for? Please tick all that apply:

Resp

onse

s

What do you use your mobile device for?

Mobile Features

Search functionality

Journal browse

Saving to favourites

Also Read (allows you to view a list of

articlesother readers of this

article have read)

Share an article via email

Share an article via social media

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

9

32

34

44

35

37

37

55

46

33

40

26

76

32

31

22

27

10

2

3

4

7

22

4

7

21

15

30

How important are the following features in a mobile app?

Not at all important Low importance AverageHigh importance Extremely important

Taylor & Francis Online Mobile

Engaging your users

• Marketing your library

• Social media white paper

Marketing your library

• Publishers’ resources – tell us what support you need!

• User guides

• Video training content

Using social media to engage your users

Uses for social media channels

Customer service

Distribute news and information

Competitions

Build connectionsArrange events

Engage with students

Share photographs

Provide instructions

Promote library collections

Develop communities

Top 5 uses for social media in the library

1. Events promotion 76%

2. Library Services Promotion 72%

3. Resources/collections promotion 70%

4. Library refurbishment updates 63%

5. Promotion of new acquisitions 61%

5 least popular uses for social media in the library

1. Highlighting subject specific information 38%

2. Connecting with potential students 34%

3. As a teaching tool to promote information literacy 25%

4. To promote courses 22%

5. As a research tool to locate official documents 21%

Customer Service

• One of the most common uses of social media is to deliver customer service

• Librarians reported declining use of websites to deliver customer services information

• Challenge for librarians is responding in a timely fashion, as users expect quick answers

Driving user engagementSocial media has the potential to help create and build strongly connected communities

One of the opportunities with social media is listening to your community… I think that’s primarily why we have a Twitter account, and we have also claimed our Foursquare location, so we can listen and monitor. That’s yielded some pretty positive reviews and results.

Case study: using GoSoapBox to drive user

engagement• Polling software GoSoapBox was used to encourage

interaction with students

• A button was added to Blackboard to enable users to post ideas which could then be voted on

• Encouraged interaction along with a sense of co-responsibility/ownership of issues and opportunities

http://www.gosoapbox.com

Driving user engagement: top tips

• Use imagery to communicate ideas quickly

• Address issues important to your users

• Post a variety of messages

Collection Promotion

• Activities using social media to encourage usage of collections are diverse and unstructured

• Challenging to provide tailored communications to users with niche interests

• Listening is felt to be as important as broadcasting

The results found that promoting the library’s collection was within the top 3 objectives for using social media.

Collection promotion: top tips

• Integrate channels

• Introduce regular posts, e.g. Information Literacy Friday

• Focus on an interesting angle to pique curiosity

How can Taylor & Francis help?

User guides Platform training workshops Promotional collateral Video content Taylor & Francis Online Mobile White papers – social media and free content Author & researcher seminars

More information

www.tandf.co.uk/libsitekate.shanahan@tandf.co.uk