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The Times They Are a-Changin'
(again!): the second, great
digital transition to the mobile
spaceDavid Nicholas, CIBER
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The dam bursts!
Not so long ago (2008) CIBER surprised information professionals with revelations of what the Google Generation were up to in the virtual, unmediated information space [report opposite]
But seen nothing yet, with information professionals barely taken breath and stock, another revolution is on us, and is has a greater force behind it
Google Generation (and the rest of us) have been empowered by a mobile device (smartphone/tablet) that will take a form of behaviour alleged as extreme to a completely different level and may bury many of our institutions and belief systems with it. The end of culture as we know it!
While first transition, from physical to digital, transformed the way we seek, read, trust and consume information, the environment in which we conduct these activities had not really changed – still in the library/office, and on a device primarily designed for the desk/office bound.
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And bursts again!
However, information behaviour no longer mediated or conditioned by the office or library but by the street, coffee shop or home. And time-shifted.
Another change: mobiles not computational devices but access devices; also social, personal, cool and massively popular. A very heady cocktail!
And they are the preferred device of social media users – mobiles stride the major information domains. There will be a knock on.
According to industry estimates the mobile device will soon be the main platform for searching the web, so talking about a majority activity
Have come a very long way in a very short period of time! It was not very long ago that libraries banned the mobile and now the mobile is the library!
Little knowledge of how mobile users behave, and how differs from desktop users. Talk fills gap with analysis of logs of Europeana. Millions of users.
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Basic characteristics of digital information seeking behaviour
Foundations of digital behaviour already in place (brain rewiring) on which mobile-induced behaviour will build, so worth going over them
Hyperactive: love choice and looking. Connected to big fat information pipe 24/7Bouncers: most people view only 1-2 pages from thousands available; 3 is manyPromiscuous: around 40% do not come back One-shots: one visit, one page
Because:•Search engine searching (lists) and links (enjoined to go elsewhere)•Massive and changing choice•So much rubbish out there•Poor retrieval skills (2.2 words per query; first page up on Google) •Forget: leave memories in cyberspace; adds to ‘churn’ rate•Direct result of end-user checking•Multi-tasking - more pleasurable doing several things at once
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Horizontal has replaced the vertical, reading is ‘out’ and fast information ‘in’
• Information seeking wise ‘skitter’ (moving rapidly along a surface, with frequent light contacts or changes of direction). Power browse.
• Nobody does much reading or not what is traditionally thought to be reading (reading whole documents). A read can mean 10-15% of a doc. Logs tell us:
•Scholars go online to avoid reading; prefer the visual
•Only a few minutes spent on a visit; 15 minutes is a very long time;
•Shorter articles have much bigger chance of being used; short story books designed the digital universe
•Abstracts never been so popular
• Fast information. (Information) snack/bite has replaced the three course meal (whole document)
• Conditioned by emailing, text messaging, tweeting and PowerPoint to like fast shots of information. Mobiles, of course, the ultimate take-away
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Now what then of mobile behaviour: case study Europeana?
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• Mobile usage growing at 5 times greater than ‘fixed’ devices
• A staggering rise of nearly 400% in last six months
• 130,000 mobile users accessed Europeana in last 6 months
• Over 90% Apple Mac devices; iPads the vast majority
• Visits from mobiles much less interactive: fewer records/pages viewed, fewer searches conducted; less time spent on a visit. Information ‘lite’
• Big differences between devices: limited screen real estate and slowness of Blackberry means use very abbreviated, iPhone quite abbreviated and iPad generates metrics closer to desktops/laptops. Little depth research on show.
• Mobile use peaks at nights and weekends; that from desktops on Wednesdays and late afternoon
Europeana mobile use
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Implications for information science: the mobile, the borderless information environment and libraries
• Constitutes another round of disintermediation and migration. Relatively speaking the library’s information universe has shrunk as a result of everyone else’s being massively expanded. Researchers’ information horizons once bound by the library but not anymore.
• Libraries perceived as incomplete sources of information and researchers increasingly less likely to trust librarians to make the critical decisions on what is and what is not in the walled garden on their behalf.
• On top of that Google Scholar, Social media etc. create a new value proposition by providing citation and other (alt) metrics so users can form own views on what is a good. Substitute for the intermediary.
• Libraries find it difficult to articulate the value or even the rationale for their collections in a borderless information environment. Mobile just adds to their woes.
• Location, location, location is the watchword!
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Final reflections
"There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating. We can contrast this with technologies that do have learning curves, but pay off well and allow users to become experts (for example, musical instruments, writing, bicycles, etc. and to a lesser extent automobiles)."
• Where are we going with information, learning and mobile devices?
AppendixPolish use of Europeana v. rest of world: 6 month comparison, by type of
device
Oct 1, 2012 to Mar 31, 2013
Oct 1, 2011 to Mar 31, 2012
Visitors VisitsPage views
Pages visit
Duration
(mins)Bounce rate
New visitor
s Visitors VisitsPage views
Pages visit
Duration
(mins)Bounce rate
New visitor
s
All2,696,24
6 3,473,30813,288,68
2 3.83 2:19 49.8 74.88 1,413,7351,842,39
2 9,537,422 5.18 2:37 55.85 74.42cf year before 91% 89% 39% -26% -11% -11% 1%
Poland 143,631 200,062 779,394 3.9 3:06 44.62 68.5 109,032 141,886 683,640 4.82 2:43 53.69 74.48change 32% 41% 14% -19% 14% -17% -8%
All Mobile 132,608 157,887 446,043 2.83 1:29 57.25 81.4 27,918 34,173 131,928 3.86 1:39 61.33 80.89change 375% 362% 238% -27% -10% -7% 1%
All Tablet 119,948 143,758 423,040 2.94 1:32 55.99 80.6 23,172 28,130 108,521 3.86 1:43 61.88 80.48change 418% 411% 290% -24% -11% -10% 0%
Poland M&T 1,043 1,255 4,000 3.19 1:11 44.06 76.33 489 575 1,596 2.78 0:46 66.61 77.74change 113% 118% 151% 15% 54% -34% -2%
Poland accounts for 5% of ALL Europeana visitors despite 6th biggest population in Europe. Only accounts for 0.4% of mobile visitors. General growth in visitors 32% compared to 91% overall. Better growth in mobile visitors (113%) but not as good as elsewhere
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CIBER dashboard: fixed and mobile user information seeking compared
Duration of visit (seconds)
Time per page (seconds)Record views per visit
Page views per visitQueries per visit
Visits from mobile devices are much less interactive: fewer records/pages viewed, fewer searches conducted;
less time spent on a visit but longer on a page
.
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CIBER dashboard: mobile platforms compared
Duration of visit (seconds)
Time per page (seconds)Record views per visit
Page views per visitQueries per visit
Really big differences: limited screen real estate and slowness of the Blackberry is clearly a limiting factor for in-depth research. On the other hand, the tablet iPad generates usage metrics that are not hugely dissimilar from desktops or
laptops.
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When is Europeana used?
Day of week
Fixed peak(Weds)
Mobile peak(Sat)
Percentage of Europeana page views within category: mobile and fixed users by day and timeOctober 2010 to July 2011
Intensity of Europeana use, as expressed by page views, varies between the week and the weekend and at different times of the day as people shift between different contexts and personas, from the professional to the personal. Clearly, mobile devices have considerably widened access to Europeana at weekends and outside of traditional office hours.
Fixed peak(17h-18h)
Time of day of week
Mobile peak(23h)
%page views
