Videoconference · 1 October 2003 · 1 to 4 p.m.
MOLO Regional Library System Training Center

Remote Access Users: A New World of Opportunity for Libraries

Getting to Know Remote Users

As your library reinvents yourself to provide more and more resources and services through the Web, you will see less and less of your users. Sometimes it is hard to know if anyone is "out there." To be responsive to their needs and expectations, you will need to use whatever information is available about the characteristics and behavior of online users in general, and about your community of online users in particular.

Presentation Slides 

• Slides (HTML | PowerPoint)
• Printable handout (PDF, 181KB grayscale) with slides and lines for notes

More Information: Related Links and References (by Slide Number)

• (2) Shifting the focus at UNR
  • Goodbye Library, Hello Knowledge Center
    
• (7) Who's Online? Demographic Information
  • U.S. Households with Internet Access
    From A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use Of The Internet, published by NTIA and the Economics and Statistics Administration of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce in February, 2002.
• (8) Who's Online in the "Industrial Midwest?"
  • Internet Use by Region in the United States
    By the Pew Internet and American Life Project in August, 2003

• (9) Main Reasons Given for Discontinuing Internet Access
  • Chapter 8, The Unconnected
    From A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use Of The Internet
• (10) Who's not Online? and (11) Reasons Non-users aren't Online
  • The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A new look at Internet access and the digital divide
    By the Pew Internet and American Life Project in April, 2003
  • Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans. The Children's Partnership, 2002. 
    
• (12) Online Activities
  • Daily Internet Activities
    Pew Internet and American Life Project site
• (13) Online Activities During 2001
  • Figure 3-2 Activities of Individuals Online, 2001 
    From A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet
• (14) More Online Activities ...
  • Online Activities of Internet Users by Household Family Income, 2001
    From A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet
  • Health Topics Searched Online
    From Internet Health Resources
    By the Pew Internet and American Life Project in July, 2003
  • Experiences of Different Information Seekers
    By the Pew Internet and American Life Project 
• (15) Most popular searches last week
  • Ask Jeeves: Top advancing searches for the week ...
  • This Week's Lycos 50
    
• (16) Google Zeitgeist
  • Search patterns, trends, and surprises according to Google
    
• (17) Understanding the Future: The "Net Generation"
  • Diana Oblinger. "Boomers, Gen X's, & Millennials: Understanding the
    New Students," Educause Review 38.4 (July/August 2002):27-47
  • Don Tapscott. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill,1998.
  • Jason Frand. "The Information Age Mindset," Educause Review 35.5 (September/October 2000): 15-19
    
• (18) Theories of Online Information-Seeking Behavior
  • WordSpy - Information Foraging
  • M.O. Thirunarayanan "From Thinkers to Clickers: The World Wide Web and the Transformation of the Essence of Being Human," Ubiquity 4.12, (2003).
  • Richard W. Oliver  "’My’ Generation," Management Review (January 2000): 12.
  • Bruce Harley, Megan Dreger, and Patricia Knobloch. "The Postmodern Condition: Students, the Web, and Academic Library Services," Reference Services Review 29.1: (2001), 23-32.
    
• (24) Usage Data
  • Some examples of Web analysis tools are
    AccessWatch — Shareware
    Analog — Free
    WebTrends Log Analyzer — a commercial product