Who Are These People…?

started with the Environmental Scan
won’t do another one anytime soon, because trends are long (they are just playing out)
librarian reactions = interesting, but it has nothing to do with my library and my users; didn’t see the trends applying to them
so as a result, they did the Perceptions study to look at trends in a quantitative way to give them data to support or not support the trends; weren’t sure what to expect

Summary:

– The Amazoogle user environment = for many, the first and last resort of research?; available at the point of need; comprehensive? (people think it’s comprehensive); where are library services?
people seemed to be living in this world; this was ubiquitous in a wired and wireless world
Open WorldCat was a direct result of the findings of the EScan

questions:
does the future of libraries depend on the ability to mee the needs of users? but do we know who they are, what their needs are, how they differ from traditional needs/services, how do we respond to all of these changed needs?

wanted to know: preferences in information seeking, use of libraries including electronic sources, libraries vs. search engines, the “library” brand: what does it mean, the library’s purpose and mission (this is the data, even if we don’t like the answers)

surveyed in Canada, US, U.K., Singapore, India, Australia with Harris; it was done in English and on the web – two caveats; 3,348 total users surveyed
thought public librarians would discount the study because librarians see the digital divide and think those are the majority of users; but numbers online at the time of the survey show more than 60% of users in several countries are online; increasingly, there are fewer and fewer people who are NOT online

customer surveys measure what you do and how well you do it compared to peoples’ expectations of your service

96% of respondents have visited a public library
72% have a library card
90% of college students hold a library card
– they know libraries

starting an information search graph: 84% start their typical search at a generic search engine (not named); library website = 1%; from a marketing point of view, how long have we been around versus search engines? in 10 years, search engines gobbled up that market; we no longer own that market, if we ever did; get over it!

it’s always been this way! – showed Public Library Inquiry from 1947–1950 – 56% would consult a professional source, 18% in a book, 9% would ask a family member or friend, 8% a magazine, 1% the library!

usage of electronic resources by total respondents: online news, IM, search engines, and email are all above 50%
talked about trends versus fads; IM is NOT a fad!!! 51% of all respondents are using IM; a fad is sometimes part of a trend; in the late 20s early 30s, women bobbed their hair – it was called a fad, but hindsight tells us it was a very important trend towards the beginning of a trend towards emancipation

who has worthwhile information? “agree” or “completely agree” as a total percentage; “worthwhile” is a library word – we use it; we sell ourselves this way, but patrons don’t see that
Google – 93%
Ask Jeeves – 88%
Yahoo – 85%
MSN – 81%
Library websites – 78%

what sources have you used
Google - 71%
Yahoo – 64%
Netscape – 25%
…
library website – 21% (why is ours so low when we’ve been around as long as the commercial search engines?)
ask a librarian – 5%

awareness of services that no longer exist, and yet….

finding new websites
friends – 61%
…
library website – 15%
librarians – 8%

how do we move ourselves up from the bottom to that top? are we thinking of ourselves as part of our community? social networking tools, myspace, etc.

1. familiarity and favorability: summary
“The Origin of Brands”
should have an online brand with a different name and a different strategy than your offline stuff; otherwise people don’t know what you are
suggests you can’t just push the physical building/organization on the web in the same way that it exists physically; if you look at most library websites, it mimics our internal organization
we brand ourselves by our institution; why don’t we do it like starbucks? why is there no univeral library brand?

what do people think they are doing less of now that they are online?
read the newspaper – 26%
read books – 26%
listen to radio – 21%
TV – 39%
visit with friends, family in person – 14%

how do you anticipate your personal usage of the library will change over the next 3–5 years?
62% – stay the same20% – increase
18% – decrease

stay the same = apathy; a bad place to be

reasons to use the library (at least annually):
borrow print book – 54%
use specific reference books – 51%
get assistance with research – 41%
read/borrow bestsellers – 39%
use PCs/internet – 39%
get copies of journals/articles – 34%
use online databases – 33%
do homework/study – 27%

awareness of library offerings – % of folks who said they DID NOT KNOW if their library offered these services:
online librarian service – 63%
ebooks – 60%
electronic magazines/journals – 58%
online databases – 58%
audiobooks, digital/downloadable – 54%

most college students mostly know about the library’s website, but think other resources have better information
why haven’t you used your library website? didn’t know it existed, said others have better information, can’t find it (big green bar says I came, I used it, I left and didn’t come back)

use of library resources (library used most recently, used at any time ever):
online library catalog – 64%
library website – 62%
online reference materials – 52%
electronic magazines/journals – 47%

a marketing opportunity! people don’t know what we have

seeking assistance in using the library’s resources (new report just on college students subset about to be published; includes a separate chapter on 14–17 year-olds; college-attending, not just age) – did you ever seek help from the library and then what’s the first source you go to for help:
total respondents – 64%
college students – 54% said didn’t ever seek help from the library

if 100 people responded to the survey, only 27 of them would have sought help from a librarian

librarians vis-a-vis search engines:
76% who asked for assistance think librarian added value
43% thought the help was equivalent to what they got from a search engine

showed Kathy Sierra’s slide about how users feel about your service – want love or hate; you’re screwed in the middle because it’s apathy; means you’re not differentiated from anything else; zone of mediocrity

chart of libraries vs. search engines
libraries were trustworthy & accurate, but search engines were speedy, convenient, easy to use, cost-effective, and available
convenience will always trump accuracy
turns out speed isn’t quite as important as we thought it would be – convenience is (although speed is part of that)
** we have to find a way to make quality convenient!

2. using the library: summary
every successful new brand was created by divergence of an existing category – divergence means to create a new category, have a new name and perform a single function. uses iPod as example of a divergence brand
means libraries need to be a new category, not just an old brand

3. the “library” brand
a single library marketing itself doesn’t further the library brand as a whole

What do Google, Gerber, and Eggo have in common? they’re all selling familiarity, trust and quality – those intangible traits summed up by the word “brand” – Fortune, October 2005

the whole thing about brand is that you have one, whether you think you do or not
branded water as example – water is the same; we’ll pay more for water but we scream about gas prices; libraries as free??

brand – a combination of differentiation and relevance:
diff – the degree to which it stands out
relevance – the degree to which consumers believe a brand meets their needs

top of mind associations with the library:
books – 69% (and they really did mean books – not knowledge, learning, information, wisdom, etc.)
entertainment – 7%

it’s a common view across geographic regions – most results came out the same across geography/culture
even in India, Singapore, U.K. – it’s books! (“the world is flat”); our brand is extremely strong across the world

an element of brand is trust – is the info you get from library sources trustworthy?
most users said it’s about the same (mediocrity!)

how do you judge if an electronic resources is trustworthy?
86% said “I just know”
59% said “on recommendations from a trusted source”

who are trusted sources – experts (20%), other websites with similar information, print, coworker/colleague, teacher/professor, relative, library materials, librarian (2%!)
have to find a way to move ourselves up to “expert” – how do we become visible

main purpose of library is information and then books (lots of verbiage about “books” in “information,” though)

library’s role in the community:
85% = “is a place to learn” and this aligns with Stephen’s personas project

branding expert at Cleveland expert had a roomful of librarians say what they do that is unique; took tens of ideas and crossed them off down to 5; “a place to learn” was one of the five things: “free” is also important in the context of a “safe” place, a community center

library brand- summary:
“the right time to reposition a brand is when the market changes. you need a lot of patience to reposition a company or brad; it’s harder to change a brand in the mind than it is to put a new brand in the mind. also you need a link to the past; you can’t walk away from what you already are.”
– can’t just parachute the existing brand; can’t use the same services we’re already offering as a way to reposition ourselves

asked for 2 positive, 2 negative associations with libraries:
products/offerings – 60% is good
customer & user service are negative
facilities & environment are negative (cold, dark, dusty, need table lamps, libraries in U.K. have no bathrooms, parking)

respondents ages 14–17 clearly are not being made welcome; Stephen’s personas show this, too; they have very negative interactions with us and it’s doing major damage; they’re among the highest users of libraries, and yet if we ask if they value our services, they value us the least; there’s a big disconnect going on here; Stephen also saw a split between boys and girls, with boys feeling they are treated more negatively than girls

older people responding said they love the library, they used to go all the time, can’t go there anymore because can’t leave the house (service gap)
10% of verbatim in the back of the report – 22,000 of them from the respondents!
– from the comments, nostalgia is part of our brand

“I think the public libraries provide a very good service to the public but with using the computer it makes it easier for me to find information I would need from the internet….”

“When I was younger, and computers were not available, he library was the best source of knowledge, and leisure reading.” – 68–year old in US

the rise of the user class – “users and consumers will tell us where they want library services to go either passively, by disappearing from our libraries, or actively, because we’ve asked them.” – Alane
– this is where the whole focus on the user comes back and we have to involve them with the design of our services

do we rejuvenate the brand or make a new one?
– user-centered planning based on their perceptions?
– differentiate between the “company” and the brand because users are building library things now

what is the library brand and how are we relevant in peoples’ real lives? how do we participate as experts and friends?

quoted Michelle Boule! “It does not belong to us” – February 17, 2006

in a nutshell:
quotes Lorcan Dempsey – “users have had to build their workflow around the services the library provides” we need to reverse that and build our services around them!

remember that you do not equal your users!

question: google & starbucks have the budget, but libraries are all sizes; there’s no infrastructure for a universal brand
alane – Ocean Spray cranberry brand is a co-op; you might not have a big marketing budget at your library, but together, we have a lot more; collectively we can probably do something; there are differences between McDonald’s (rich, poor, etc.), but they still have a universal brand

question: isn’t that what Open WorldCat does?
alane: maybe you don’t see the individual brand first thing, but that’s okay; it’s “library” generically
stephen: some of this is behind the “@ your library” campaign at ALA; and yet we still have to be independent