In January's edition of College & Research Libraries, Jennifer Gerke and Jack Maness (2010) suggest that library users’ physical experience in the library is closely tied to measures of their satisfaction with the electronic resources of that same library. Based on the results of a LibQUAL+TM survey, the authors contend that users’ satisfaction with electronic collections was most significantly related to “the frequency with which they used the library’s web site and, most interestingly, the physical library they most often visited” (Gerke and Maness, 2010: 20).
This article grabbed my attention for two reasons. First, because it counters popular claims that physical libraries are no longer relevant in the “Internet age”. And second, because as much as we library advocates like these sorts of findings, they still seem to surprise us. . . just a bit. Why shouldn't users' experiences in the physical library (library as place) somehow be related to their experiences with digital library collections? What fundamental assumptions do we make that cause us to imagine that the opposite must be true? I mean, is it really all just about "content"? Moreover, if user satisfaction ratings for a virtual library are somehow tied to the user’s experiences in the library’s physical space, what does that mean for our understanding of the role of the library in knowledge organization, management, and dissemination?
Gerke, J. and Maness J. (2010). The Physical and the Virtual: The Relationship between Library as Place and Electronic Collections. College & Research Libraries, 71(1), 21-31.
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