It seems like this year all content providers have decided to rethink their user interfaces, and since June we’ve managed the migration of five (Five! Count ’em!). Any migration is a pretty serious undertaking for us because I make sure we’re thorough, checking *everything* about the new interface when we make a change. If there are bugs, I want to find them before our users do. It’s quite a bit of work and it’s important work because I want our patrons to know that they can trust that we’re working on their behalf. As I’ve mentioned before (http://orgmonkey.net/?p=1382), if our patrons find the problems first, that breaks their trust with us. By providing consistently accessible e-resources I feel like I’m silently communicating to our patrons, “you can trust us.”
I wonder if any of you out there think about trust and the growing online delivery of library content? I’m beginning to read widely on the topic, especially related to marketing, starting with the following:
David C. Arnott, (2007), “Research on trust: a bibliography and brief bibliometric analysis of the special issue submissions,” European Journal of Marketing, 41(9): 1203-1240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03090560710773408
There are 643 references in that article, so I’ll be reading a while. If you’ve got other articles/books to suggest, please leave a comment.
