Social Capital, Trust and Organisational Effectiveness:

Discrepancies between users’ service preferences and

the library system’s construction of their needs

Niels Ole Pors

Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark

The data

• A nationwide survey of 998 high school students and their use of libraries and information resources

• A public library study of over 1000 users and non users in a municipality (Furesoe: 40 000 citizens)

User characteristics in the municipality

• Females (62%)• 85 % is over 30• 60 % has a long education• Stay at library under 15 minutes (63 %)• One third uses also other libraries• 50 % uses the internet as a gateway or intrance

to the library• Over 40 % uses bibliotek.dk (a national online

catalogue with the holdings of all libraries)

Activities during the library visit

56

51

20

32

16

10

17

6

36

21

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

returned

loan books

loan music/film

staff

online catalogue

Internet

reading place

meeting place

newspaper

exhibition

%

I came to the public library today for % of the user groups

1 A specific book 44

2 Literature on a subject 21

3 A certain kind of novels 27

4 A specific audio CD 8

5 A certain kind of music 7

6 A specific film 5

7 A certain type of film 4

8 A certain (playstation) game 2

9 Advice, reference or other informational activities 12

10 Exhibitions, meetings, educational activites 7

This is due to IT and poses a very heavy problem for libraries

Furesoe How successfull were you? & satisfaction with

today’s vsit(very satisfied and

satisfied)

I came today for All Some Nothing

1 A specific book 98 88 65

2 Literature on a subject 97 77 70

3 A certain kind of novels 98 92 57

4 A specific audio CD 98 100 86

5 A certain kind of music 97 94 89

6 A specific film 100 100 75

7 A certain type of film 100 83 72

Priorities based on pairwise comparisons

• Present opening hours• Longer opening hours• More music• More music• More copies• More fiction• More computers• More reading places

• Longer & more self service• More books• More books• More films & dvd• A broader range• More non fiction• More reading places• More places for relax

The library cardless persons

• 50 % classifies themselves as library users

Perceptions public library 1 (cardless citizens)

77

93

66

93

79

92

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

boring rules fees bad exp difficult superflous

Agree

Disagree

Perceptions public library 2 (cardless citizens)

71

23

52

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

media buy loan others

Agree

Disagree

High school students priorities of PL’s services

In terms of importance

importance0 - 100

Ranking

Collection of fiction 55 6

Collection of non - fiction 62 4

Collection of film 37 10

Collection of music 41 8

PC 34 14

The homepage 34 14

Study places 33 13

Wireless network 40 9

Group work facilities 35 11

Places for relax 43 7

Exhibitions, lessons 28 15

Quite and peacefull places 59 5

A kind and polite service 72 1

Ambience 64 3

Distance 67 2

The many discourses of the library profession

• Enlightnement• Social inclusion & integration• Mean for democratic development• Learning spaces & information literacy• Meeting areas – social room• Information navigator• Quality

– Constructing the user based on rationalistic ideas of proper information behaviour or the autopoeisis (self referentiality) of the system

Social capital and libraries

• Stimulating SoCap through ”libraries as places” – the library as the third place

• Facilitate the cohesiveness of society through activities directed towards more or less marginalised groups– The focus is on the library as the actor and

facilitator, creator of SoCap

Social capital

• A trans-disciplinary concept with roots in economics, political science and sociology

• Different dimensions of the concept– Transaction costs – Societal cohesiveness and institutions– Networks and norms

• Levels– A societal level and an individual level

Problems with SoCap

• Definitional problems

• The dark side of SoCap

• Measurement problems

• Problems with causality

Social capital defined

• Trust directed towards individuals, groups and institutions

• Trust can be defined as an expectation about peoples’ and institutions’ behaviour and the behaviour’s conformance to established norms– General trust– Trust in institutions

• Correlation between the two levels

Dimensions of organisational effectiveness

• Goals

• Stakeholders

• Decisions

• System

• Resources

• Staff

• Customers

Organisational effectiveness is played out in a room with

• Low trust relations• Managerialism• Emphasis on staff competencies and

empowerment• Increasing stricter control mechanisms• Accountability• Structural changes • De-coupled systems (loose connected systems)

Conclusion

• Trust is related to expectations and experiences• Trust is probably a relevant concept in relation to

information behaviour• Trust is probably related to fullfillment of information

needs• Trust probably influence choices of information

resources employed• Trust is probably related to institutions’ degree of

effectivenss, efficiency, perception of competencies and positive personal interaction

• And finally trust and social capital are concepts that will be more fashionable the coming years