![\"Smartphone](\"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/librariesinlife-connaway.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nWe used to bring all our learning, content and media resources to various \u201cwatering holes\u201d where folks would gather to consume it. Classrooms, libraries, newspapers, magazines, TV networks, bookstores and record stores. Why? Because it was the fastest way to distribute a wide variety of materials. It wasn\u2019t wrong. It made sense. But it also left us with embedded cultural and institutional ideas and biases about what learning is, who is involved in our workflows, what counts as \u201cgood enough\u201d and even why we learn.<\/p>\n
Now? The content comes to us through digital devices anywhere and at any time. We can pick and choose from a variety of sources based on factors that didn\u2019t apply when media were collected around physical distribution centers. And that repeals a lot of the laws that we grew up with concerning information dissemination and retrieval.<\/p>\n
Take a moment and think back (if you\u2019re old enough) to those days before the Web. Imagine yourself in a library or a record store or looking at a classified ad in a newspaper. Imagine you\u2019ve already found a piece of content that interests you and that you want. As you pause to consider your options, which of the following questions would be answered easily:<\/p>\n
Trying to answer any or all of these questions in the days before you had a smartphone could require hours, if not days, if it even was possible. Now? In most cases you could click your way through that list while waiting for your coffee to cool down a bit.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what we mean when we say that Ranganathan\u2019s Fourth Law, \u201cSave the time of the reader,\u201d (The Five Laws of Library Science<\/em><\/a>) now should be considered the first law in how libraries approach user service. However, we now substitute \u201cuser\u201d for \u201creader,\u201d since libraries support so many more types of information acquisition.<\/p>\n Late last year, OCLC Research released The Library in the Life of the User<\/em><\/a>: Engaging with People Where They Live and Learn, <\/em>a 10+-year compilation of user behavior studies and findings. Taken together, the ten chapters provide a good, basic understanding of much of the work we\u2019ve done in this area. All of which can be said to come under the heading of \u201cinside out\u201d libraries, to borrow a phrase from Lorcan Dempsey\u2014the ways in which libraries succeed by taking traditional library resources and services and getting them \u201cout there\u201d into the lives and workflows of our users.<\/p>\n The first chapter covers our 2015 report, Reordering Ranganathan: Shifting User Behaviors, Shifting Priorities<\/em><\/a>. And it articulates what is arguably the single most important imperative of how the digital revolution has changed the environment for the work librarians do:<\/p>\n Convenience trumps everything else.<\/p>\n When we looked at Ranganathan\u2019s Five Laws<\/a>, we realized that all the laws still apply\u2026but that \u201csave the time of the user\u201d was now the most important. In Ranganathan\u2019s time, one of the most pressing issues facing librarians was getting books out of closed stacks and into the hands of patrons. Thus, his first law, \u201cBooks are for use.\u201d In the 85 years since he first proposed his laws, most libraries have moved well beyond that issue. Today\u2019s dilemma for librarians isn\u2019t about how to \u201cfree the library\u2019s books.\u201d It\u2019s about how to \u201cfree our users\u2019 time.\u201d<\/p>\n We also need to remember that convenience isn\u2019t one-size-fits all, or even one-time-fits-all. Our users are becoming accustomed to having multiple choices for what\u2019s convenient. Think of watching Netflix on your TV or laptop or smartphone. We can choose to get the same information from many different sources as an email update, in a blog post, or by reading it on a website or within Facebook. Any definition of convenience has to be a moving target\u2014always in flux.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve learned a lot during the last ten years. And we\u2019ve collected that information in many reports, white papers and books. What I\u2019d like to do, now, is take some key thoughts and findings from the OCLC Research \u201cUser Studies<\/a>\u201d theme and put them out there to get your ideas, experiences and reactions. In terms of any \u201clife of the user\u201d equation, librarians are the \u201cusers\u201d of OCLC research, products and services.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll post some thoughts here and, hopefully, get feedback from you.<\/p>\n The question for today is this: what have you done recently to save your users\u2019 time?<\/em> I\u2019d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter with the hashtags #LibrariesInLife <\/strong>and #OCLCnext<\/strong>, which we\u2019ll use to track these discussions as I post more from this theme.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll see you out there.<\/p>\n You can watch Lynn discuss this subject further in her \u201cLibrary in the Life of the User<\/a>\u201d video from the OCLC Research Update at ALA Midwinter 2016.<\/p>\nLibraries in life<\/h2>\n
Got to get me into your life<\/h2>\n
\n