(P232) Fostering a sticky relationship: a case study from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Mar 26, 2012 | Day 2 (5 Jun), Library Services & Dev | 0 comments

Ten years ago, Professor Davenport and Professor Beck in their book “Attention Economy” posited that users suffer from information overload and attention deficit due to the explosive growth of online content. With so much information easily accessible from the user‘s computer, the relevance and usefulness of the library and its services has been called into question.

Professors Davenport and Beck, identified several factors to capture the attention of users – relevance, community, engagement and convenience. Drawing on these ideas, this paper examines how NTU Library has sought to create new avenues of collaboration with faculty and students of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, in order to foster a “sticky” relationship between the library and the community that it serves.

Central to the development of the relationship is the library‘s active role in creating a more interactive and collaborative learning environment. To do this, the library has undertaken a number of initiatives including integrating library resources into the users‘ online learning platform (Blackboard) and setting up online subject rooms and course blogs. The library also promotes the works of the NTU academic community by archiving scholarly academic papers in the NTU digital repository (DR-NTU) and highlighting outstanding student papers in the Outstanding Academic Papers by Students (OAPS) project.

In developing stickiness in the relationship between the library and the academic community, it is important that the library not only meets current information needs but also anticipates future ones. New media is being used actively by the library both to promote and enrich information seeking. For example, QR codes have been embedded in library print materials to link to ebooks and online resources.

While instructional and reference services continue to be a core part of library services, it is hoped that these new linkages will further the partnership between the library and the academic community which it serves.

Emma
Emma NTU, Singapore
Originally from the UK, Emma came to Singapore in 1992. She worked for a number of years as an Editor in a publishing company. She subsequently undertook some cataloguing work for the National Archives before embarking on a Masters in Information and Library Studies. She joined the NTU Library in 2010 as the English literature librarian at the Humanities and Social Sciences library.
Yew Boon
Yew Boon NTU, Singapore
Yew Boon joined NTU Library in 2005 to head the newly established Humanities & Social Sciences Library. Last year, he was concurrently appointed Deputy Director, New Media Group, a new division formed to coordinate, evaluate and spearhead social media initiatives, mobile projects and learning technologies. He had represented the library in several campus wide projects such as the Cool Campus Implementation Committee and the Blue Ribbon Commission Subcommittee on Classroom of Tomorrow.

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