Information Needs Analysis Principles and Practice in Information Organizations

About this book

If you want to provide an information service that truly fulfils your users' needs, Information Needs Analysis is essential reading. Analysing and assessing the information needs of clients is key to the provision of effective service and appropriate collections in both face-to-face and virtual library services. The importance of information needs analysis is widely recognized by information professionals, but currently there is little substantive, detailed work in the professional literature devoted to this important topic. This new book is designed to fill that gap, by supporting practitioners in developing an information needs analysis strategy, and offering the necessary professional skills and techniques to do so. It will offer guidance to team leaders and senior managers in all areas of library work, especially those involved in collection management, service provision and web development, and is equally applicable to the needs of academic, public, government, commercial and other more specialized library and information services. The text adopts a hands-on, jargon-free approach, and includes relevant examples, case studies, reader activities and sources of further reading.

Key areas covered include:
- what is information needs analysis?
- how is needs analysis conducted?
- what are the varieties of needs analysis?
- how are analyses evaluated and reported?

Readership: Information Needs Analysis will be essential reading for library and information practitioners, team leaders and senior managers. It will also be a core text on course reading lists in departments of library and information studies.

Contents

1. Background to needs analysis for information managers
2. The importance of context in information needs analysis
3. Models and types of information needs analysis
4. The stages of information needs analysis
5. Gathering data for information needs analyses
6. Gathering data from existing sources
7. Gathering data through surveys
8. Gathering data through interviews
9. Analysing and integrating information needs analysis data
10. Reporting on an information needs analysis

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Biography

Daniel G. Dorner is Senior Lecturer, G.E. Gorman is Professor of Library and Information Management and Philip J. Calvert is Senior Lecturer at the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.