Listening to Customers: How EBSCO Plans Enhancements and Product Acquisitions Based on Customer Feedback

The importance of customer feedback and the value that it adds to product development and enhancements cannot be overstated. Customer feedback also plays a key role in the development of online resources. But how do you merge customer feedback and the development of new proposals for product design? The balance between customer feedback and strategic direction is something EBSCO strives for in every build of new product enhancements. Many of the company's most important products and interface enhancements can trace their origins back (at least in part) to customer feedback or customer‐based advisory boards. By keeping an open channel of communication between customers and developers, EBSCO has positioned itself as a global leader in matching ongoing product development to current customer need. In doing so, the company has also laid the foundation for ascertaining and responding to the future needs of customers.     

Strategic Management in the Media: Theory to Practice,by Lucy Küng

Abstract

Management has always been about communications. Business strategy in particular can only work, if implemented. Part of the process is communicating strategy to all company's stakeholders. The more team‐orientated a management style the more communications becomes a key success factor. By the same token, there has never been a management discipline for communications in its own right comparable to all the others that have developed over time: Neither Marketing nor HR nor even Finance were part of the original settings as, for example, laid out by Erich Gutenberg in the 1960s. All these “subs”; were initiated by increasing specialisation of business administration and developed to mature disciplines.

This article will argue for yet another management discipline, communications management. The reasons are mainly twofold: on the one hand there are increasing needs on different types of communications even without the world‐wide web (such as financial communications), which must be integrated in one holistic approach. And on the other hand there are increasing new challenges caused by the digital economy (such as customer related communications), which will have to be integrated in an even advanced holistic management approach. This article will combine both reasons, but mainly focus on the first aspect.     

Applying Fourth Generation Management to Access Services: Reinventing Customer Service and Process Management

ABSTRACT

Are librarians doing all they can to ensure that customer services are delivered with the customer in mind? Librarians are great at helping, but we sometimes need help with identifying customers, defining their needs, developing services, and reviewing the processes behind the services. Fourth Generation Management provides new insight for librarians as we compete with customers, our patrons, to offer new services at an ever-increasing rate. Libraries need to improve customer services in order to remain a vital part of their community.     

Customer centred community application design: Introduction of the means‐end chain framework for product design of community applications

Abstract

This paper discusses the application of the means‐end chain (MEC) framework for investigating customers cognitive”; structure regarding community applications. It is argued that the understanding of customers cognition is crucial for the development of sustainable communities. MEC analysis is seen as a mean to support the community design tasks, especially concept development. The MEC analysis within concept development helps to improve the success rate of a newly designed community by the early integration of customer needs and benefits. Based on theoretical considerations about the MEC framework and its limitations a case study regarding an information community is illustrated. Data was collected conducting individual laddering interviews online at a major information portal in Germany. Dividing answers into attributes, consequences, and values and using content analysis hierarchical value maps (HVM) for both, messaging applications and information ‐portals, were constructed. To support concept development of a new information community, as a distribution platform for content, the findings of both HVMs were considered. Examples illustrate, that the MEC analysis helps to create a community concept that is focused on the targeted customers. It is supporting the creative process of finding community functions and features that are fitting or can be linked to the existing cognitive structures.     

The Info Commons Concept

Abstract

The University of Florida Libraries took the opportunity of remodeling its Humanities and Social Sciences library to conceptualize the design of an info commons area for the new building. An Info Commons Concept Team was formed and charged with this task. The team used site visits, surveys, focus groups, and interviews to determine the needs of today's library users. This paper describes the informationgathering process and categorizes the data gathered into several areas of need, including service, workstation components, laptop support, and space and environment.     

Syndicating Rich Bibliographic Metadata Using MODS and RSS

Abstract

Many libraries use RSS to syndicate information about their collections to users. A survey of 65 academic libraries revealed their most common use for RSS is to disseminate information about library holdings, such as lists of new acquisitions. Even though typical RSS feeds are ill suited to the task of carrying rich bibliographic metadata, great potential exists for developing applications that can exploit metadata exposed to Web services via RSS. Using the MODS metadata format, entire catalog records can be seamlessly embedded in RSS 2.0 feeds. Existing tools, such as Library of Congress Java toolkits and XSLT stylesheets, can facilitate this process, while a new XSLT stylesheet may be used to create the RSS feeds complete with MODS records. As an example of the added functionality these MODS/RSS feeds can offer, records from a MODS-enriched RSS feed can be ingested into a non-RSS application such as Zotero. As more emerging library technologies use Web services architectures to handle data objects, the ability to syndicate catalog records will become more critical to providing innovative library Web services.     

Kindling Social Entrepreneurial Journalism

ABSTRACT

After a decade of economic crisis and ongoing technological innovation, scholars and journalists have argued that new production patterns for news media are required befitting the emergence of entrepreneurial journalism. This study investigated the effects of prior experience with social problems, empathy, moral obligation, social entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and perceived social support on the social entrepreneurial intentions of 421 Taiwanese journalists. A regression analysis suggests a prominent association of social support with social entrepreneurial intentions, followed by social entrepreneurial self-efficacy, empathy, and prior experience with social problems. No significant association was found between moral obligation and social entrepreneurial intentions.     

On Demand Book Production with New Technologies

SUMMARY

This paper discusses the transformation of the book binding industry and possibilities that binding technology affords today's authors, publishers and book designers. Book manufacturers will endure, although they will be challenged to offer better products with ever faster service.     

An Autoethnographic Approach to a Supervisor-Supported Climate Survey

Abstract

Academic libraries typically employ a top-down approach to employee performance evaluations, which often does little to reveal an employee’s needs within the workplace and fails to provide an opportunity for supervisors to assess and reflect on how their actions impact the work environment. Using an autoethnographic approach, a supervisor and a support staff member developed an assessment instrument to evaluate the supervisor-supported work climate in one department of an academic library. This project helped promote both individual and department-wide discussion on what elements make a supportive work climate and provided the supervisor an opportunity to reflect on ways to improve support efforts. This article includes practical information as well as the lived experiences of the collaborators.     

Developing a web-based toolkit for new mothers about postpartum pelvic floor health in collaboration with a professional medical association

Background:Few electronic resources are available for new mothers with concerns about changes in their pelvic floor following childbirth. Patients may struggle when seeking authoritative information regarding pelvic floor conditions online given the sensitivity of the topic as well as the inadvertent connection to obscene or demeaning content found online. A health sciences librarian partnered with the Motherhood and Pelvic Health Study, an interdisciplinary research group, to provide expert searching skills for a particularly challenging health condition that patients struggle to find useful information on.Case Presentation:A custom rubric was developed to evaluate existing information products, which included criteria for cultural sensitivity, conflicts of interest, and other red flags. This evaluation process enabled the research team to identify top-tier evidence-based materials that were culturally congruent. This collaborative evaluation process led to the creation of a web-based toolkit resource for new mothers concerned about changes in their pelvic floor. The toolkit connects women to pertinent information on a national health organization''s patient portal, supplemented by videos created by the team to serve as models of communication for women and health care providers.Conclusion:When developing a web-based resource, health sciences libraries can partner with research teams to find, evaluate, and disseminate information. Culturally congruent toolkits such as this one can improve access to health information and lead to improved health outcomes. To ensure that the information highlighted in toolkits is both culturally congruent and authoritative, research teams should form advisory committees and partner with relevant professional medical associations.     

Managing Customer Relationships

ABSTRACT

The most important thing for a book vendor in managing customer relationships is successfully managing the company's own resources. Book vendors must be able to hire and train staff who understand the changing needs of libraries and who are able to influence the company's strategic direction and daily operation so that these needs are met. In recent years, book vendors have had to go beyond bookselling, and provide technical services to help libraries to become more efficient. This has required new levels of expertise from book vendors, who today work more closely with their customers then ever before.     

Core Competencies of Front-Line Employees

Summary

The last decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium have seen unexpected changes. In Europe, especially in Germany, we are undergoing revolutionary changes in almost all domains of entrepreneurial, cultural and societal activities. These changes affect libraries too. Due to Electronic Data Processing, governmental regulations, and cultural changes, the workload for librarians has become more and more demanding. Traditional library education does not meet the needs of the 21st century. Customer service means more than doing a good job. This paper deals with some of these phenomena, focusing on libraries in Germany.     

Emerging Trends in Fee-Based Information Delivery

Abstract

Fee-based information services in libraries will face many challenges in continuing to offer value-added, cost-effective services to customers during the opening decade of the new millennium. Some of the challenges are similar to those faced by other library units, but others are unique. Many of these are related to the proliferation of electronic resources and to the “do-it-yourself” approach customers have toward them. Other issues that must be addressed include shifts in client expectations; the demand for new types of information services and products; unresolved intellectual property issues; evolving means of providing access, delivery, and distribution; the need to form innovative partnerships; and the increasing globalization of the customer base.     

Going the Extra Mile

Abstract

Even though every library, whether research, academic, public, special, or school will tailor their service to accommodate the specific needs of their customers or community, a common thread-our attitude toward customer service-bonds all librarians. How can we improve our desire to serve with a smile? Does a smile make a difference in customer service? What are some libraries doing to motivate their employees? How can we help one another on the job? This article will explore these and other related questions. Today's libraries are competing with a variety of information sources, some of which are easily available to the user through the Internet. In order to help preserve our most valued asset-our customers-libraries need to incorporate a well-developed, quality customer service program in their operational plan and budget.     

X marks the spot: Creating and managing a single service point to improve customer service and maximize resources

ABSTRACT

This article will describe how merging service points in an academic library is an opportunity to improve customer service and utilize staffing resources more efficiently. Combining service points provides libraries with the ability to create a more positive library experience for patrons by minimizing the ping-pong effect for assistance. The Access Services Department at the University of North Texas Libraries was charged with management of the circulation and reference services offered at the service desk. Streamlined planning and modernized management of the desk and its impact on customer service in a changing library environment will be discussed.     

Customer Experience in Public Libraries

ABSTRACT

Public libraries today are gingerly stepping into the emerging philosophy among successful businesses around the world: customer experience. Libraries are hiring staff with “customer experience” in their title, others are curious and want to learn more. Most of the resources currently available to libraries hoping to get started take a corporate approach particularly as it impacts financial success. The bottom line is that all of us are in the customer experience business, whether we know it or not. It goes to the heart of everything we do – how staff interact with the public and each other, the value libraries provide to a community, even the cleanliness of the restrooms. Additionally, many of those companies that library users experience in their daily lives – health care, insurance, retail – have already jumped on the customer experience bandwagon, overall raising the public’s expectation of what they should experience in libraries. How and where to start? How does a library build a road map to develop a customer experience philosophy and culture, which staff will embrace and support? When building a new library how do you design that building using a customer experience lens? Columbus Metropolitan Library has spent the last 5 years mapping out a customer experience practice, which includes staff training, journey mapping, customer insights, customer engagement training, and library design.     

The use of semantic network analysis to manage customer complaints

Effective handling of customer complaints is obviously in the consumers’ interest, but analysis of the letters can also provide valuable information to the organization. Organizations can use customer complaints as a way of recording organizational information and tracking effectiveness of their consumer relationship management. In this paper, we argue that organizations should adopt the use of semantic network analysis as an efficient and effective means to track complaints ‐ and what customers are complaining about ‐ over time. We present an example of the use of semantic network analysis with the complete texts of all complaint letters sent to an organization during a one‐year period. The semantic network analysis of the text of the complaint letters identifies the central concerns of this customer group and suggests that the organization address these issues. Through the use of semantic network analysis, an organization can uncover trends and provide support for decision‐making regarding customer relationship management issues.     

On the Merit of Case Studies in Access Services

ABSTRACT

The creation of “Access Services” departments in academic libraries did not translate into the creation or offering of new services for patrons. Instead, it was typically just the combination of three already existing departments. Recent changes and trends in Access Services, including new NCIP and ISO standards, an increase in the use of electronic reserves, and the availability of items in various formats, now allow librarians to reconsider if this departmental arrangement is the best for today's library customers. This paper argues that the traditional configuration of Access Services needs to be dismantled if academic libraries are to provide excellent customer service to faculty and students.     

Improving Access to Electronic Resources (ER) Through Usability Testing

SUMMARY

Electronic resources (ER) constitute an increasingly significant portion of library collections, both in usage and cost. It is vital to design easy, efficient access to these collections as users have other online options to meet their information needs. Thus, an important goal for ER librarians is to provide a usable ER site. Formal usability testing is a powerful tool to help librarians create the most useful site for their customers. This chapter will cover the basic components of usability testing and suggest ways in which ER librarians can lead efforts in their institution to improve the customer experience with library Web sites. ER librarians can create buy-in from library staff for usability testing as a worthwhile method to improve access to ER through involvement in the process and sharing results of the testing. The responsibilities of ER librarians vary from one institution to another, but all share in the mission of the profession to serve its customers' information needs. This chapter addresses the possibilities of usability testing as a force to maximize the user experience with the collections ER librarians manage.     

How and Why of User Studies: RLG's RedLightGreen as a Case Study

SUMMARY

This article documents a lifecycle approach to employing user-centered design, covering both qualitative and quantitative data gathering methods in support of using this approach for product design, usability testing, and market research. The author provides specific case studies of usability studies, focus groups, interviews, ethnographic studies, and web log analysis. The article supplies practical advice and tools for those interested in exploring user-centered design concepts for web-based tools and services in archives, libraries, and museums.