Reflection/Observation Papers

I have choose article entitled “Understanding the User – Why, What and How” was been written by M S Sridhar, as a main article. As to support this article, I have compile and backed from a few articles.

Introduction
Customer satisfaction and service quality is priority to libraries. The Libraries should know the need, importance, purposes and scope of user studies. Study and learn in the methods and techniques for conducting user studies.

The first priority in understanding of the user is the need for user studies. User studies are must at the time of designing a system or service. The effectiveness of a library and information system depends on the extent to which the system characteristics correspond with the users and able to make use of it. Users are more aware than ever that the data they are using are not the data that they need and that the data are not always correct (Freedman, 1987)

According to the author, there were three tips to know about users; Characteristic of users; Information requirement (needs) and Behaviour, attitudes, opinions, priorities, preferences and evaluations of users. I would like to explain about Characteristic of users. In the main article, he explain that user-studies look for similarities and differences among the users in terms of their background like status, age, experience, education etc. Its also was been supported by Prabha et.al, 2007, they said social role helps to understand how individual seek information in difference role and show how individual incentives and intentions influence the information choices users make

In the main article also, it’s mention about research procedure for conducting user studies. There have are eleven steps to follow:

• Selection & formulation of research problem & hypothesis
• Literature survey
• Overall design/planning the strategy of the study
• Sampling & sampling strategy/plan
• Data collection
• Measurement & scaling techniques
• Pilot study
• Processing and analysis of data
• Testing of hypotheses
• Interpretation, generalisation & realisation of objectives
• Preparation, writing, presentation & dissemination of research results

Research very important to librarianship as an academic discipline and achievement of excellent in professional practice (Sridhar,1995). All efforts put into satisfying library customers are based on satisfaction of customers not just for the objectivity or target. In order for libraries to stay relevant, their systems need to emulate internet search engine (Prabha et.al, 2007).

Summary
Even though it’s very difficult to satisfying all customers, library should move ahead in process of planning for improving the service. Libraries must plan one step ahead from customers or same level.

Reference
Freedman, David H. 1987. What Do Users Really Want? Infosystems. Wheaton: Jun 1987. Vol. 34, Iss. 6, p. 34 (3 pp.)

Prabha, Chandra, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Lawrence Olsewski, and Lillie R. Jenkins. 2007. “What is enough? Satisficting information needs,” Journal of Documentation, 63,1:pp.74-89.

Sandusky, R.J., Tenopir, C., & Casado, M.M. 2007. Figure and table retrieval from scholarly journal articles: User needs for teaching and research. D. Chiang & P. Solomon (Eds.) Proceedings of the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Sridhar, M. S. 1995. Understanding the user - why, what and how?. Library Science with a slant to Documentation and Information Studies, 32(4):pp. 151-164.