Understanding international users' library experience in the Digital Age – joining the behavioral and experiential aspects
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2022-0035 |
| Published date | 30 August 2022 |
| Date | 30 August 2022 |
| Pages | 608-634 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Yaming Fu,Elizabeth Lomas,Charles Inskip,Jenny Bunn |
Understanding international users’
library experience in the Digital
Age –joining the behavioral and
experiential aspects
Yaming Fu
School of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China and
Shanghai Library/Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of Shanghai,
Shanghai, China
Elizabeth Lomas and Charles Inskip
Department of Information Studies, University College London, London, UK, and
Jenny Bunn
The National Archives, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to describe, analyze and understand international users’library
experience in the Digital Age in order to inform library service design and ensure it provides an inclusive
environment. In this study, the behavioral and experiential aspects of user library experience are merged to
developessential interconnections between information behavior (IB) and user experience (UX) in the context of
the academic library with the goal of constructing a more holistic understanding of ‘library experience.
Design/methodology/approach –The study was built on the concept “library experience”through
analyzing its essential components of IB and UX. It was developed through findings from mixed methods
research, consisting of the quantitative investigation from a library log analysis, and qualitative investigations
via cognitive mapping exercises and semi-structured interviews, both targeted on the largest single group of
international students in United Kingdom –international Chinese students.
Findings –The findings demonstrated the complexity and multilayered characteristics of international
Chinese students’library context, and three unique contexts emerged from the data shaping their library
experience. Building on the previous findings on the connections between IB and UX, the work attempted to
redefine “library experience”by joining both behavioral and experiential aspects. It is found that the key
components of cultural library experience are the multilayered context, cultural group’s perception needs,
sense-making process and subjective evaluations.
Originality/value –This study joins the behavioral and experiential perspectives together to explore library
experience in a more holistic way and proposes a systematic structure to understand and analyze library
experience, especially that of international users in a cross-cultural context, which, in turn, will better serve
their information needs and inform the design of a more equal and inclusive library system.
Keywords Library experience, Library user study, The Digital Age, Information behavior (IB), User
experience (UX), International Chinese students
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The Digital Age, characterized by an exponential growth in information, an increasing
amount of digital-born materials and evolving digital technologies, started in the late 20th
century and continues through to today (Salganik, 2019;Smith and Crespo-Dubie, 2018).
Within this context, technology development has changed the way information is produced,
JD
79,3
608
Funding: This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council (File No. 201808060180).
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible
for the content and writing of this article.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 9 February 2022
Revised 7 June 2022
10 August 2022
Accepted 11 August 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 3, 2023
pp. 608-634
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2022-0035
stored, organized and accessed, and this influences people’s behavioral and experiential
responses to information. There has been a fundamental shift in scholarly information
production and access, with increasing electronic publications, diverse publication and
access options and more Web 2.0 tools that are designed to support scholarly communication
and so forth (Cullen and Chawner, 2011;Wid
en, 2010). Libraries, as a bridge between users
and scholarly information, are working toward evolving user expectations against this
digital transformation backdrop (Connolly et al., 2019). This shift prompts us to think about
how “the digital”has influenced and transformed users’relationship with and within
academic libraries and how to holistically understand and analyze library experience to
account for both behavioral and experiential aspects.
A further complexity is the notable globalization of library users in this digital backdrop.
Since 2016, the British Council has recognized this remarkable shift happening in the UK
higher education (HE) institutions and has highlighted the need to learn more about the
neglectedinternational studentgroups in this system (Ilievaet al., 2019). Among all the cultural
groups, Chinesestudents were the largest single international group in the 2020–21acad emic
year, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Despite a 5% drop in
Chinese student enrollment in the UK due to the Covid-19 pandemicthat began in 2019, this
group remains the largest amongst all non-EU student groups (32%) (HESA, 2022). Their
learning experience and academic achievement have a considerable influence on theappraisal
and student satisfaction of the university and the assessment of educationalquality (Barefoot
et al.,2016). Studentexperience in the HE systemhas been discussed and studiedextensively by
educators;the discourse since the DigitalAge has centered around the complexnature of their
learning experience in the digitally enabled society, which is driven by multiple human and
nonhuman factors when a socio-material perspective is applied to discover how students
engage in learning practices (Fenwick et al.,2011;Gourlay and Oliver, 2016). Therefore,
understandingand catering for internationalstudents’academicneeds is crucial in supporting
this large educational recipient group. However, the extent to which these international and
cultural backgrounds are recognized and catered for has been limited, despite the increasing
potential for new technologies to personalize library services, improve user satisfaction and
explicitly recognize respect for diversity and inclusion (Jaeger et al.,2015).
There is a complexity around the connection and duality of the physical and digital
characteristics of library system and services; that is, the physical and digital aspects of the
library are sometimes treated as separate domains which lead to separate investigations of
either experiential or behavioral part of usage. For example, qualitative approaches such as
interviews, observations and ethnographic methods are commonly used in investigating user
experiences in the physical library space (Lincoln, 2002;Paretta and Catalano, 2013;Bryant,
2009). In contrast, quantitative approaches such as large-scale surveys and system analysis
are generally adopted to study usage patterns, preferences and other performance indicators
that demonstrate behavioral characteristics of users (Steinerov
a and
Su
sol, 2005;Bollen and
Luce, 2002). It is pointed out that the digital domain has tended to be treated as an isolated
system that is “disembodied, decontextualized and free-floating,”away from the impact of the
physical side (Gourlay et al., 2015, p. 263). Studies that investigated either physical or digital
usage of the library can only reveal a fragmented picture of the interaction between users and
the library, while the users’overall experience with the ‘library’(symbolically) is overlooked
to some extent. Focusing on different aspects of library user studies, information behavior
(IB) and user experience (UX) research has been mostly investigated in terms of separate
ways of looking into user’s behavioral and experiential characteristics, respectively.
However, exploration over both concepts has identified some interconnections and suggested
the value of probing the UX aspect in behavior research (O’Brien, 2011), which brings about
new thinking on joining both aspects together in understanding “library experience.”
Users’library
experience in
the Digital Age
609
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