Engaging with clients and personalising services at UTS Library: measuring the value for libraries and their clients

Abstract

Libraries have found themselves overtaken by commercial entities providing open, unmediated information services, causing debate about the future of libraries. It has been argued that in order to stay relevant, libraries must undertake a fundamental shift towards a new focus on engaging with clients. At University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Library we have commenced a number of activities aimed at engaging our clients, but currently only have anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness. This is a conceptual paper which seeks to define engagement and consider how practitioner researchers can provide research-based evidence of the effectiveness of engaging with clients and taking a user-centric approach to service design.