Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (review)

At a recent American Library Association conference session on the state of library science research today, a prominent academician in the field bluntly asserted that most research in the profession could be categorized as user studies and most of it bad. Enter Char Booth. Booth's Informing Innovation provides guidance for academic librarians struggling to design programs and services that keep pace with patrons' technological skills, interests, and behaviors. Booth also provides a coherent blueprint for improving the quality of user research in the profession.

Booth argues that technology adoption in most academic libraries is not well planned. She characterizes recent introduction of new technologies in libraries as relying too much on prototypes without questioning their applicability to our patrons—an "if you build it they will come" philosophy. Booth argues for a new approach, something she refers to as environmental scanning, to identify factors that motivate student interest in and adoption of emerging library technologies before they are implemented. In a broader sense, Booth argues that academic libraries should create and nurture "cultures of assessment," in which user studies become a standard aspect of academic library operations rather than the occasional exception. This idea should be familiar to academic librarians facing pressure from campus administrators for greater accountability in selection of resources and delivery of services.

The book is divided into two sections. Part one provides an overview of research into patron use of interactive technologies commonly referred to as Web 2.0 or Library 2.0. In her literature review, Booth identifies key national and international studies of user behavior related to emerging technologies, including The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, http://www.educause.edu/ers0808, from the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research and A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/A-Typology-of-Information-and-Communication-Technology-Users.aspx, from The Pew Internet & American Life Project. Booth also identifies a few noteworthy user studies conducted at academic libraries. Expanding this section to identify more such studies would have been helpful. Booth follows the literature review with a concise guide to designing and implementing user studies. Written in non-technical language and illustrated with examples pertinent to the profession, this section would alone justify acquiring the book. Booth guides the reader through defining scope and purpose, choosing a methodology (including a helpful chart comparing methodologies commonly used), creating research questions, identifying research variables, constructing and distributing research instruments, analyzing data, and applying results to practice.

Part two is a detailed description of the research conducted by Booth at Ohio University to help prioritize adoption of emerging technologies in end-user library products and services. Conducted in two parts using commonly available Web-based survey software, Booth's research attempted to identify which emerging technologies patrons use and to gauge receptivity to library adoption of specific examples. Among technologies probed were integration with social networking services like Facebook, browser toolbar customization, use of text messaging and Web calling services like Skype, and integration of library tools with learning management software such as Blackboard.

A particular strength of the case study is Booth's data analysis. Booth goes beyond common frequency counts and cross tabulations to utilize more advanced statistical measures, familiar yet seldom used in applied library science research, such as correlation coefficients. Booth describes the measures, how she utilized them, and how she interpreted her results. Because of the large number of surveys conducted by libraries each year, an improvement to this section (for a new edition or a subsequent book) would be further discussion of sampling techniques. Although Booth quite appropriately notes limitations of the ubiquitous "elective convenience sample" that relies on voluntary participation, a discussion of sampling techniques that might yield more statistically valid results, like stratified sampling, would have been helpful.

Booth ends the book with two helpful appendices. In one, she provides sample questions to...