Assessing Information Needs

Assessing Information Needs

Based on a tested model for community analysis, this book offers a guide to the management of client-centered transformative information services that can be applied in any type of library or information agency. Knowing a community enables library and information professionals to prioritize the community's information needs and design appropriate services for them. Assessing Information Needs: Managing Transformative Library Services was written to provide the rationale for community analysis, a model for gathering community data, and a process for analyzing data and applying it to the management of an information agency. The book explains why information professionals should customize services, as well as the "how to" of collecting data. A model for gathering community information is described, applied, and demonstrated through a case study. The book then shows how such information is interpreted and used to plan information services that are transformative for individuals and groups in the case-study community, providing lessons that readers can use with their own institutions. Rooted in a philosophy of customer service, the method presented here is perfect for public, school, academic, and special libraries or other types of information agencies.

Assessing Information Needs in the Age of the Digital Consumer

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.

Assessing Information Needs in Complex Organizations