Research On The Information Services Of Academic Libray Based On The Users' Participation

Information services must focus on their users. The Academic library is always the distributing center of information and knowledge, and its information services, especially those new ones, depends on the degree of the users'participation. This dissertation is so disscussed to analysis the academic libraries'information services from this view point.What influence the user participation is firstly disscussed, including the charactristics of the user groups and their information needs, the mental factors, and the exoteric factors. The user groups of academic library can be concluded as two types, the undergraduates and the teaching staff, while the latter including the research staff and students. Through a large amount of literature investigation, four mental factors are induced, such as altruism, sensation seeking, psychological needs, and group pressure. While the exoteric factors include the quality and abundance of information resources, the usability of tools and technologies, the drive and restriction of social criterions, and the ensurance of management system. A systematic analysis of the four types of behaviors and their relationship is also developed.Then through a great deal of websites investigation of the domestic and abroad academic libraries, their current information services are analyzed in a comparison way. According to the author's criterion, those services are divided into four types, the traditional information services, knowledge services, new services intergrating with Web 2.0 technologies, and others, such as the mobile library services and the library games. Each type of services are examined and deeply argued, especially the degree, mode, and effects of their users'participation.Based on the forgoing analysis, the positive and negative influnences of the users participation behaviours are disscussed, while the latter including information quality problems, technology renew matters, copyright and privacy protection issues. And to solve the exsiting problems and the above negative influnences, this dissertation proposes some countermeasures to academic libraries'information services in China. The library of Anhui University is then analyzed as a case study. Trough research, the author points out that the academic library must pay more attention on the mental factors of the users'participation, and then carries out some appropriate enconraging methods to promote the users'enthusiasm. When choosing the enconraging ways, it can refers to the social website's experince, comprehensively uses many methods, such as cumulative scoring, participation degree ranking, resources exchanging, and attending website administration. The suitable time, frequency, intensity and orientation are also need taking care of.The author also finds out that there are little differences between the domestic and abroad libraries on the traditional information services, while a huge divide occurred on the knowledge consultation area. Acctually, the academic librarians in China have a little amount. When comparing in the new information services, different results are concluded. On the areas of library blogs, micro blogs, RSS, and mobile library services, little differences are found in the technology adoption, while a relative broader gap in the application range exists. On the other areas of Wiki, folksonomy and library games, both gaps are wide. China falls behind.Finally the solutions are advised to the development of academic libraries' information services which based on the users'participation. According to the athour's opinion, quality controll, copyright and privacy protection, and user promotion construct the main part of the countermeasures, with the technology collaboration, user training, services and administration modes innovation taken as auxiliary measures.The dissertation takes Anhui University's library as a case study. Through analyzing its information resources and present situation, the author proposes a tentative idea for the library to develop its current information services and initiate some new services.At the last of this dissertaion, the main conclusion and drawbacks of this research are addressed, and the future research direction is also pointed out.