{"id":76,"date":"2016-02-15T09:52:52","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T09:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/?p=76"},"modified":"2016-02-15T19:55:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T19:55:54","slug":"the-library-of-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.oclc.org\/next\/the-library-of-one\/","title":{"rendered":"The library of one"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2016-02-06<\/a><\/p>\n

What does it mean to be a \u201clibrary user\u201d today? I think we can all agree it\u2019s a question that is less well-defined than in the past. Which is why OCLC Research points out the necessity of \u201cmeeting library users at the point of need.\u201d As Lorcan Dempsey puts it in his book, The Network Reshapes the Library<\/a><\/em>, \u201cWe are used to thinking about the user in the library environment \u2026 a major part of our challenge moving forward is thinking about the library in the user environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t agree more. And if the definition of \u201clibrary user\u201d is fragmented, we need to think in terms of \u201cwhat people use\u201d as opposed to \u201cwhat the library traditionally does.\u201d Which leads me to three questions:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What are the environments in which people search for information?<\/li>\n
  2. Where in those environments can libraries establish a meeting?<\/li>\n
  3. How can libraries add the most value there?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Watering holes and central stations<\/h3>\n

    The first question isn\u2019t too hard to answer. We know from publicly available data the largest sites used for information searching and sharing. These fall into two general categories:<\/p>\n