THIS BOOK AIMS to help library and information services (LIS) workers at all levels and in all industry sectors in the UK and globally to survive and thrive in the 21st century. ‘All levels’ include those in careers spread across all sectors of library and information work (such as local government, private or ‘special’ and academic libraries) and electronic information related posts such as webmasters and knowledge managers. We intend that – like our other titles – this book will be useful to an international audience.

We believe that there is still a lot of potential to reach users through changing methods of communication, and electronic information workers and digital librarians have some more work to do. You can track people through websites, but it is more difficult to understand why they navigate the way they do as well as seeing where they navigate.

Keep in touch with any new user or user group and track their behaviour to see if new patterns of behaviour are forming. Watch what other industries such as publishing are doing to make their users come to them. Expand your activities to cover online networks, digital libraries and other forms of social networking.

We encourage all information workers to constantly think ‘out of the LIS box’ – looking at your LIS with new eyes and new knowledge at all times, and find out how to stay ahead of the game.