What%20is%20beyond%20books%20and%20journals?%20Pointers%20from%20CIBER

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What is beyond books and journals?Pointers
from CIBERs Virtual Scholar programme

• David Nicholas
• CIBER
• UCL Centre for Publishing,
• Department of Information Studies
• University College London
• http//www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/

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Two bits of information to get you thinking

• An internet year is only 7 weeks
• The biggest users of the House of Commons
  intranet are robots - by miles, and there are
  pages that only robots ever go to
• What is the significance of this? By the end of
  the talk you will be able to answer this!

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Pointers come from the straight from the horses
mouth, millions of horses

• 8 years of collecting digital fingerprints of
  millions of scholars (students, kids, academic
  researchers, lecturers, general public) from all
  over the world and every field under the sun
• Users of following ScienceDirect, Oxford
  Journals, Synergy, BL Learn, Intute, OhioLink,
  Oxford Scholarship Online, MyiLibrary, Wiley
  Interscience, IoP Journals, NHS Direct Online,
  Times Online, Independent Online etc
• Be a mug to ignore this evidencethere are plenty
  of mugs
• The evidence is that the what lies beyond books
  and journals has to be (user-facing and informed)
  e-book and journal services!
• The pointers are

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Pointer 1 E-journals books are VERY popular
dont forget this

• Hugely popular and escalating demand
• Everything offered used
• Vast amounts of use millions millions of
  pages viewed and millions of visits made. Numbers
  astonishing.
• Double digit levels of growth - despite
  wall-gardened systems
• Plenty of growth in system (millions of people
  still like to use but cannot) and products can be
  improved (more later)
• Good for you high consumption levels lead to
  very positive outcomes.
• Watch fireworks with e-books - will lead to new
  and closer relationship between books and
  journals which will power both to new heights
  (OUP)

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Pointer 2 big growth from e-books dont forget
have only seen phase 1 of the digital transition

• Offer condensed, distilled knowledge big
  demand inappropriate use of journals
• Textbook access particular big issue with
  students - unblock the blockage!
• Under-utilised resource because contents not
  digitally visible, now accessible, roads and
  motorways built, suitable for power browsing
• Bait of abstract and keyword, raises to the
  prominence (digital visibility) enjoyed by
  e-journals
• Students, humanities scholars and general public
  can join the e-revolution, enter the virtual
  scholarly space.

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Pointer 3 there are other attractionsthink
reliability, quality and brand

• Journals and books have a high degree of
  visibility and recognition
• People know what they are shopping for and
  getting
• Links nicely and strongly to brand and authority
  (quality products)
• Business class product
• In an anonymous, confused and crowded environment
  pretty important to recognise this

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Pointer 4 twin pillars of scholarly
communication doing well, thanks to digital
transition

• Where the dangers and opportunities lie exist not
  in new systems, social networking etc but
  understanding what has happened to scholars as
  being fast forwarded into the virtual scholarly
  space
• We now know more about how people use and seek
  for books and journals than we ever did and need
  to make this work for us and we dont!
• Each new system, new diversion risks further
  disconnecting from the customer base they have
  become anonymous
• The most important things we need to understand,
  stick on the back of the door follow

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Pointer 5 Information seeking is fast,
directand highly pragmaticforget notions of
quiet contemplation, disciplined reading

• Most users visit for only a few minutes, and view
  only a couple of pages.
• Opposite of fast-bag drop, fast-bag pick-up
• The dont want to hang around! In and out
• Help them speed through the site, save time.
• There is nothing wrong with that

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Pointer 6 they like it short

• Shorter it is the more likely it is to be read
  online
• If its long, either read the abstract or squirrel
  it away for a day when it might not be read
  (digital osmosis)
• People actually prefer abstracts much of the
  time, even when given the choice
• Go online to avoid reading

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Pointer 7 they like it simple but publishers
and librarians seem to think otherwise!

• Users by-pass carefully-crafted discovery
  systems. Killer stats (1) 4 months after SD
  content was opened to Google, a third of traffic
  to physics journals came that way. Effect is
  particularly notable since physics richly endowed
  with information systems and services (2)
  Historians biggest users of Google, together with
  young people
• While Google searching hugely popular, once users
  enter a site browse rather than search again
  using internal search engine (dont trust it, too
  complicated).
• Advanced search used rarely, and hardly at all by
  users in highly-rated research institutions.Add-on
  s and innovations distinctly a minority sport
  email alerts, VLEs, blogs

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Pointer 8 they do it all the time this is a
solid and undisputable outcome

• Logs fantastic for discovering exactly when
  scholars search
• Use well into the night and over the weekend
• Quarter of use occurs outside the traditional
  working day and weekends account for around 15
  of use (another working day!)
• Some things never change - Lunch time still the
  busiest time and Monday lunchtimes the busiest of
  all (e-shopping)
• October the busiest month
• Government researchers dont search weekends or
  in the evenings!
• Economists most likely to work out of hours and
  life scientists the least

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Pointer 9 want immersive social information
environments but few people listening!

• Said something which threw us all initially -
  they could not understand why they had to do all
  the work in getting something from the website.
  At first this was attributed to laziness but it
  turned out not to be that. They felt the content
  was locked, submerged and they had to dig a lot
  to see it, when maybe the service could make some
  things available automatically the data coming
  to them, rather than having to chase it.
• Returned book trolley! Come on guys wake up, stop
  chasing FaceBook the lessons to be learnt are in
  your own backyard

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Pointer 10 Diversity rules OK!

• Subject Life Scientists insatiable
• Type of organisation government labs and
  universities in same subject exhibit very
  different information behaviour.
• Research-intensive universities behave very
  differently
• Per capita use is highest in most
  research-intensive institutions
• Users spend much less time on visit
• Forsake most of the online facilities provided
• More likely to enter via gateway sites
• Searching Germans most successful searchers
  most active information seekers.
• Age older users more likely to come back, and
  view abstracts. Young people use Google more,
  spend more time online viewing. Staff v student
  use

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Pointer 11 need to relate/information seeking to
establish outcomes

• Lets use the data for purposes other than
  measuring activity
• Public good does not wash anymore (those warm
  feelings)
• Access no longer an outcome
• Better students, degrees, researchers, more
  funding etc
• Cost-effectiveness the car park question
• Which leads us to our RIN research

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Lessons

• Business class services
• It works but could work better more immersive,
  more community, more outcomes
• Dont complicate things, dont get hung up on
  models, just watch and react to the consumer.
  Turn that information seeking data to gold
• Identify best practice, benchmark (digital
  literacy)
• Fast food
• The only new thing I think will work is data
• Back to the initial questionsanswers, please!

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More

• http//www.facetpublishing.co.uk/index.shtml