Assessing information needs in the age of the digital consumer / David Nicholas and Eti Herman.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Aiming at ensuring that everyone obtains the rich rewards available in today's information-centred society, this book seeks to provide a systematic method for the understanding, appreciation and evaluation of information needs, which alone can guarantee the value of information to the consumer. Based on the insights gained from research projects involving hundreds of thousands of people, it sets out to provide a framework, firmly grounded in theory but nevertheless highly practical, for information needs analysis. The book is written both for librarians, publishers, archivists, records managers, journalists and other information professionals, to help them in their efforts to design improved systems and monitor the effectiveness of their services on an ongoing basis, and for individual information consumers, to enable them better to meet their own information needs in the expanding sphere of virtual information.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• The authors (p. viii)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• 1 Why undertake information needs assessments? (p. 4)
• The whys and wherefores of the ongoing neglect of information needs (p. 5)
• There is little point in conducting information needs assessments (trust us) (p. 6)
• A systems-driven profession (p. 7)
• Poor communication skills and insular and antagonistic attitudes (p. 8)
• No single or easy method of collecting the data (p. 9)
• Expensive to collect the data (p. 10)
• Lack of a commonly understood and agreed framework of analysis (p. 11)
• So why indeed undertake information needs assessments? (p. 12)
• Competition and deregulation (p. 12)
• The end-user cometh and cometh again and again (p. 13)
• The challenge of custom-made, personalised information services (p. 14)
• Cost of IT-based innovations (p. 15)
• Accountability and auditing (p. 15)
• 2 What are information needs? (p. 17)
• Information needs: a working definition (p. 18)
• Unrecognised and recognised (but unexpressed) information needs (p. 19)
• Information wants (p. 20)
• Information demands (p. 21)
• Information use (p. 22)
• The digital consumer (yesteryear's user, reader, customer, client, patron...) (p. 25)
• 3 A framework for evaluating information needs (p. 27)
• Subject (p. 28)
• Inter-and intra-individual variations in subject requirements (p. 29)
• Locating pertinent information on a subject (p. 31)
• Function (use to which the information is put) (p. 36)
• The fact-finding function (p. 37)
• The current awareness function (p. 38)
• The research function (p. 42)
• The briefing/background function (p. 44)
• The stimulus function (p. 47)
• The recreational browsing function (p. 48)
• Coping with the call for information in an era of abundant choice (p. 49)
• Nature (p. 52)
• Intellectual level (p. 57)
• Viewpoint (p. 60)
• School of thought (p. 61)
• Political orientation (p. 64)
• Positive/negative approaches (p. 65)
• Subject orientation (p. 66)
• Quantity (p. 67)
• Quality/authority (p. 72)
• Date/currency (p. 84)
• Speed of delivery (p. 90)
• Place of publication/origin (p. 94)
• Subject (p. 95)
• Practitioner/academic divide (p. 98)
• Language proficiency (p. 99)
• Processing and packaging (p. 101)
• 4 The determinants of information needs and practices (p. 111)
• Work-roles and tasks (p. 112)
• Personality traits (p. 117)
• Gender (p. 120)
• Age (p. 123)
• Country of origin and cultural background (p. 125)
• Information availability and accessibility (p. 127)
• Information appetite and threshold (p. 130)
• Time availability (p. 132)
• Resources availability and costs (p. 134)
• 5 Collecting the data (p. 138)
• Interviews (p. 139)
• The face-to-face, open-ended, in-depth interview (p. 140)
• The group interview (p. 145)
• Telephone interviews (p. 146)
• Observation (p. 147)
• Diaries (p. 148)
• Questionnaires (p. 149)
• Citation analyses (p. 150)
• Obsolescence/decay analyses (p. 151)
• Subject analyses (p. 152)
• Country/language analyses (p. 152)
• Ranked lists (p. 152)
• Web log analysis (p. 152)
• 6 Information needs analysis: ensuring the effective information enfranchisement of the digital consumer (p. 156)
• References (p. 158)
• Index (p. 172)