Library User Metaphors and Services: How Librarians look at their Users

✍ Scribed by Carl Gustav Johannsen

• Publisher: De Gruyter Saur
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 182
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

How do library professionals talk about and refer to library users, and how is this significant? In recent decades, the library profession has conceived of users in at least five different ways, viewing them alternatively as citizens, clients, customers, guests, or partners. This book argues that these  user metaphors crucially inform librarians' interactions with the public, and, by extension, determine the quality and content of the services received.
The ultimate aim of this book is to provide library professionals with insights and tools for avoiding common pitfalls associated with false or professionally inadequate conceptions of library users.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 User segments and segmentation
1.2 User metaphors
1.3 Research questions
1.4 The basic structure of the book
2 User segmentation in libraries – from library usage patterns to lifestyle segments
2.1 Approach 1: Library usage variables
2.2 Approach 2: Socio-demographic categories
2.3 Approach 3: Psychographic, lifestyle, and similar criteria
2.4 Approach 4: Combinations of library use, socio-demographic categories, and psychographic and lifestyle based criteria
2.5 Approach 5: Metaphors and user images
2.6 Summary
3 Theoretical considerations concerning metaphors, images, and similar concepts and idea transfer in organizations
3.1 Language oriented metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson)
3.2 Organization oriented metaphor theory (Røvik & Morgan)
3.2.1 Metaphor theory according to Røvik and other organizational scientists
3.2.2 Morgan’s “images”
3.3 Discourses and gazes
3.4 Organizational idea handling (Røvik)
3.5 Summary
4 Five library user metaphors
4.1 The citizen
4.2 The client
4.2.1 Immigrants
4.2.2 Digital illiterates
4.3 The customer
4.4 The guest
4.5 The partner
4.6 Summary
5 Library services and user metaphors
5.1 Community information (public information, homework assistance for pupils, and information literacy courses)
5.2 Borrow-a-prejudice campaigns
5.3 Digital reading groups
5.4 Fee-based services
5.5 Guest-host services
5.6 Mystery shopping
5.7 Online message services
5.8 Staff-less libraries
5.9 Summary
6 Library user metaphors and the experience society
6.1 The experience society
6.2 Summary
7 Conclusions
7.1 Research question 1
7.2 Research question 2
7.3 Research question 3
7.4 Research question 4
7.5 Research question 5
7.6 Research question 6
References