Access 2008: User-Generated Content

Martha Whitehead, Queen's University
Steve Toub, BiblioCommons

User-generated content in the narrow sense--tags, reviews, etc.--is all over the place. In the broader sense, it's about curation. Whitehead pointed to Web of Science as an example, i.e.- citation indexes. A reading list, such as on a Wikipedia page, is also user-generated content.

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) commissioned a usability study to find out more about the 'typical' research process. One thing they learned is that research is social, but not necessarily social tools, e.g. delicious or Facebook. It's 'social discovery,' not 'social networking.'

The main finding: "participants expressed their desire to know what trusted colleagues (professors, fellow researchers) think."

Toub then turned to an introduction of BiblioCommons, which he refers to as a next-generation catalog. They did some focus groups to ask various user groups how they use catalogs. Most users don't use facets (post-search limiting) all that much. They also reformulate queries by using the back button and starting over. Students avoid LCSH, no way to get them to use it; librarians love subject headings (no surprise there). Users don't experience pain when manually formatting citations. Librarians think direct export to RefWorks is essential. There's a trend here.

They did a second round of research, specifically geared toward user-generated content. Showed them a bunch of different resources where user participation is encouraged. There's really no research on user-generated content in library catalogs. What motivates one to tag? We need to know that. [Being a librarian appears to be one reason.]

One thing they learned is that they trust their peers more than experts, e.g.- movie reviews from the NYT don't float their boat. He showed a great quote where a student who said they don't want the opinion of an expert, but the opinion of someone as incompetent as them.

BiblioCommons offers a plethora of social options. For example, if the user allows the system to track their returns, when they log in they are asked to rate and review books (a la Netflix).

Sadly, their research showed that only a minority of users will ask questions of people known as librarians. They do not perceive librarians as experts, but as book shelvers. He suggested using different labels for ourselves. [We should really revisit this topic. Perhaps "Ask a Librarian" is the wrong way to advertise ourselves.]

Their research did show that they will tag for rewards, e.g. "Campus Credit." This could be printing credit, or whatever, but should be something of value to them.

Their research insights and conclusions are quite extensive, and I couldn't possibly keep up with my notes, so I hope they post the slides so I can link to them.

Comments

[Steve Toub]

Thanks for the kind words.

I've uploaded the presentation file to SlideShare. Download the file to see the notes.

http://www.slideshare.net/stoub/usergenerated-content-and-social-discovery-in-the-academic-library-catalogue-findings-from-user-research-presentation/