For the librarian and archivist

Several items came in overnight, via Resource Shelf, worth noting by those responsible for Library and Archives services.

1. A list of social media resources, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr Photostream and Twitter being used by the National Science Foundation to maintain contact with their client base www.resourceshelf.com/2010/04/08/the-very-social-national-science-foundation/

2. A note that David Ferriero, Archivist of the U.S. who is also a librarian, has a new blog titled, AOTUS: Collector in Chief which is described as “The Archivist’s Take on Transparency, Collaboration, and Participation at the National Archives.” One of the things mentioned is the "need to develop a comprehensive social media strategy for the agency, which will include internal and external communication efforts using new media tools."

3. An article "Digital Information Seekers: New Report Analyzes and Synthesizes 12 Separate Studies" Among the central findings are the following:

• Disciplinary differences do exist in researcher behaviours, both professional researchers and students.
• E-journals are increasingly very important to the process of research at all levels.
• The evidence provided by the results of the studies supports the centrality of Google and other search engines.
• Google is often used to locate and access e-journal content.
• At the same time, the entire Discovery-to-Delivery process needs to be supported by information systems, including increased access to resources.
• Journal backfiles are particularly problematic in terms of access

The realities of the online environment observed above led several studies to some common conclusions about changing user behaviours:

• Regardless of age or experience, academic discipline, or context of the information need, speed and convenience are important to users.
• Researchers particularly appreciate desktop access to scholarly content.
• Users also appreciate the convenience of electronic access over the physical library.
• Users are beginning to desire enhanced functionality in library systems.
• They also desire enhanced content to assist them in evaluating resources.
• They seem generally confident in their own ability to use information discovery tools.
• However, it seems that information literacy has not necessarily improved.
• High-quality metadata is thus becoming even more important for the discovery process.

In addition, some common findings regarding content and resources arise:

• More digital content of all kinds and formats is almost uniformly seen as better.
• People still tend to think of libraries as collections of books.
• Despite this, researchers also value human resources in their information-seeking.

Read the summary, including a link to the full report, at www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekers.aspx