Giving the annual Miles Conrad lecture, the University of Tennessee’s Professor Carol Tenopir, gave a spectacular talk titled “Building Bridges.” She had five main points. She spent the most time on the first point, with many examples from the research she’s conducted over the past 30 years with Don King.

1. The more you know about traffic patterns, the better your bridge will be.
Know your users
Predict future behavior
Think about their motivation for needing information
Development of feature leads to ideas for new features
People are reading more, but not spending as much time; they’re reading for major points, scanning, skimming – has implications for publishing and how to structure and format articles
There are many ways to locate information depending upon purpose of reading
Readings of older materials is increasing – more electronic backfiles available. Open access a factor? Moving into interdisciplinary courses/research needs backgrounding.
Age makes no difference
Subject discipline is a major source of differences (pediatricians read more and very recent articles than do astronomers who in turn read more than faculty overall)

2. Build lots of on ramps
New doesn’t replace old, just adds to it
Need to provide ubiquitous content to match ubiquitous computing
Libraries have done good job of building lots of onramps

3. It will never be perfect for the traffic
Will never be big enough
Expectations grow faster than you think
Digital products are never finished
They expect a feature to be there even if they almost never use it

4. The direct route may not be the strongest
People will pay for cable TV, sports ticket, entertainment, but won’t pay for information
Online companies that want to market directly to end user and avoid the middleman, the librarian. It doesn’t work. They won’t pay the bill directly.

5. The fastest way isn’t always the best
Sometimes it’s just the ride
Serendipity is part of R&D process
Allow the thought process to happen
Build beyond the search box

Her final thought: Don’t be the bridge to nowhere.

I think that final piece of advice applies both to information professionals/librarians and to the information producers who sell to them.

nfais