What could be better than that, you might ask? One of the discoveries from the online website survey is that the majority who responded DID know about research databases - woo hoo!
As we continue to wonder about their use and effectiveness given their costs, it is reassuring to see this from our survey. In addition, we discovered that the teens from our summer focus group knew the term "research databases" because they were taught accordingly in school. In fact these teens were mostly quick to look for access to them and thought it was important. Granted our teen focus group was slanted towards library users in one way, shape or form....but i'm an optimist and will take good news wherever it's at....
Do you find patrons who are very much surprised over research databases? Is this still a common reaction or have we moved away from the surprise of it all?
Now onto the laundry, there may be more "green" surprises awaiting !
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think it is important to call them what they are, at least in some places. I would say that many if not most of people using databases are doing so becuase they have to and/or have been taught about them at school. When you start being creative with the name but don't also include the more standard term, it can really confuse those users who know what they are.
When I lived in Sacramento, CA, their public library went through a web redesign. Part of that included changing the database term to "Find Articles." That seems to make sense until you consider how many databases are so much more. I don't consider Novelist, RefUSA or Rosetta Stone to clearly fall into that description. I called into the library to express my confusion and suggested they add the word "databases." I was pleased to see they changed it almost immediately and it has remained as Find Articles/Databases ever since. (See, I was outspoken even as a patron before working in "the biz." I'm not sure I should have just admitted that!)
I do like the idea of having some jazzier ways to get people's attention to the database, let's just do it without confusing those users that are just looking for databases. (They do exist!)
Monica
Post a Comment