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Contact: Kathlin Smith 202-939-4754

Report Reviews Library User Studies

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A new report from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) summarizes and analyzes more than 200 recent research publications that focus on the use of electronic library resources. The report, Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources: An Overview and Analysis of Recent Research Studies, was written by Carol Tenopir, professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with the assistance of Brenda Hitchcock and Ashley Pillow, graduate students in the School of Information Sciences.

The report is intended to provide information that librarians can use in making important decisions about collections, services, and product design. The author reviews publications based on eight major ongoing studies and roughly 100 smaller-scale studies. The literature reviewed was all published between 1995 and 2003.

Although there are some contradictions in the findings of the many studies, some clear messages emerge. Among the conclusions are the following:

• Both faculty and students use and like electronic resources and most readily adopt them if the sources are perceived as convenient, relevant, and time saving to their natural workflow.
• Print is still used for some reading and is part of research in almost every discipline. It is considered important in certain disciplines, especially in the humanities.
• Print remains the most popular medium for books; e-book use is still in the very early stages.
• Most e-journal users still print articles that are judged useful—so a printing format such as PDF is popular.
• Personal subscriptions to journals continue to decrease, so users rely more on electronic subscriptions subsidized by the library and on the Internet.
• College and high school students use the Internet more than the library for their research, and many believe they are more expert at searching than their teachers.

The overview shows that while there is no one typical user for whom a single system design or collection decisions can be made, users can be segmented into groups that display similar preferences and patterns of use. The report looks at behavior differences according to the user's status, subject discipline, task, type of institution or workplace, age, and to some degree, gender.

The author notes, "although this report summarizes conclusions from recent research studies and highlights some conclusions about how people use electronic collections, there are individual and library-specific differences that make it beneficial for many libraries to collect their own data." To this end, the author lists selected resources to help institutions conduct their own studies; these resources appear in the last section of the report's extensive bibliography.

Use and Users of Electronic Library Resources is available only in electronic form, free of charge, at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub120abst.html.

The Council on Library and Information Resources is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the management of information for research, teaching, and learning. CLIR works to expand access to information, however recorded and preserved, as a public good.

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