2018 Charleston Library Conference

In today’s information landscape, libraries, publishers, and technology vendors are adopting proactive strategies to engage with customers and end-users in new ways. When addressing content discovery and access, we often discuss “meeting customers / users where they are” – but how do we know “where they are”? How are generational and cultural shifts changing the expectations of our customers and users? And, what does it look like when such a strategy is implemented? Is this purely a technological effort? Are we talking about totally new modes of librarianship, publishing, and software development? Are there implications for cross-sector collaboration? What can we learn from one another? How do we remain relevant to users when they have many competing options for information discovery and access? What's the relationship between what users do and what they say they want? This panel will demonstrate what it means to drive anticipatory, customer-centric, and user-focused strategies for supporting academic and research endeavors.