Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions

Citation

Arnott, G. (2009), "Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions", Records Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2009.28119bae.004

Digital Consumers: Reshaping the Information Professions

Article Type: Professional resources From: Records Management Journal, Volume 19, Issue 2

Edited by David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands,Facet Publishing,London,2008,ISBN 978-1-85604-651-0

Keywords: Information profession, Library users, Internet, Library services

This is a very interesting, data rich and thought provoking collection of papers that usefully explore the make up, behaviour and psychology of the e-consumer. It goes on to assert that users of information are in fact e-consumers, that they behave in a very similar way when seeking information as when purchasing goods, and that library services must transform in acknowledgment of this.

Digital Consumers is one of those works that offers a prophetic vision for a changing world and the place of the library within it. However, in order to make the point its contributors collectively go a little too far in one direction of thought arguably, immersing themselves (and encouraging the reader to follow) in the concept of the e-consumer.

The term is consciously utilised rather than others such as user, client, customer and this is important to the thesis proposed. Inevitably, herein lies a problem, and not merely the one anticipated i.e. the instinctive reaction of librarians against such terminology.

The more substantial problem is that the e-consumer is a narrowly defined group of people and does not reflect the full range of influence or focus for library services. Therefore to respond to the e-consumer- alone could be as detrimental to library services as not considering it at all.

Having taught “customer orientation” for some ten years to students and practitioners of Librarianship, Information and Communication Management, the distinction between “customer” and “consumer” became even more amplified for me whilst reading this book.

Customer Orientation is a valuable and empowering marketing philosophy for both commercial and service sectors, that seeks to focus the development and delivery of products and services upon customer need, and establishing communication and relationships to allow these to be identified and understood; responses to be negotiated; and satisfaction determined. In these respects there are some areas of overlap with parts of the direction of the focus upon the e-consumer championed in this work.

However, the customer is a more inclusive terminology, encompassing more than just the “consumer”. Parent organisations, funding or governing bodies, government and public local authorities, etc. are customers too and their needs and priorities for the library service must also drive its development and eventual form. This broader need-supply relationship is not really acknowledged in Digital Consumers, which tends to imply that the e-consumer is king, over and above any other customer (internal or external).

Some further cautions may be offered to the reader, and certainly the student, who might use this item. Firstly, the work seems more focussed upon the scholarly e-consumer and the academic environment (although there are attempts to counterbalance this). A model of information seeking behaviour is proposed in chapter 6 that is very different to the traditional models Wilson or Ellis and Haugan for example, but the reader should bear in mind that the focus of this significant chapter is largely a scholarly community (as alerted in its title) where the experience and behaviour is inclined to be different to that of the general public, e.g. in terms of the specificity of their purpose, range of resources utilised, and the availability of e-journals, e-books and databases.

Secondly, although evidence is presented and investigated to demonstrate how the e-consumer deals with obtaining information through the internet, there is a danger that any other activity involving traditional provision is precluded. Whilst some reservations are acknowledged in chapter 6 regarding the application of quantitative data (mostly transactional log data) to infer satisfaction, such interpretation is nevertheless afforded the data without the support of a qualitative understanding of the experience that produced it. This broaches a raft of questions that need exploration – how satisfied were these e-consumers; did their information seeking stop here; how was it refined by the experience of using what was discovered; and how if at all, was it modified or supported by traditional information seeking and use of non electronic provision?

Finally, although chapter 4 explores some alternative views regarding the evolution of the library, it posits another model that feels more at home in the scholarly context than the public. It is intriguing that quotations from Bennett’s book, An Uncommon Reader are employed, but the fact that this novel is essentially a brilliant documentation of a reader development experience is not utilised and explored further as an alternative scenario. In exploring the way in which the Queen’s reading habit and eventual addiction is nurtured and assisted by people, buildings, books and browsing etc. Bennett reminds us that “reading” can be very different to “information seeking”.

If we try to ponder why the Queen is so addicted to reading books as opposed to seeking information through the internet, there might be all manner of possible answers, e.g. she has not a computer; she has no internet access; she cannot use the palace PC; she does not like reading on screen; books are just different somehow. It is valuable to bear in mind such types of exception when reading Digital Consumers as sometimes it can catch the reader unaware and carry her/him along with the flow of the assumption that everyone is an e-consumer and there is no other type of customer. The transformation of library services may well respond to e-consumer needs but it should also do so, to the needs of the customer who still has no computer; has no internet access; cannot use a PC; does not like reading on screen, etc.

All in all, I would consider sharing this book with my students, but probably with those at a more advanced stage of study and the maturity to consider it critically and in the context of a broad range of approaches and opinions regarding library services, their history, purpose and priorities.

Graeme ArnottNorthumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK