Understanding Information Research to Develop New Information Tools

University libraries in Ontario have been investing a great deal lately in understanding the research behaviour and information challenges of faculty and students, and testing the user interfaces meant to help them. Martha Whitehead will discuss the approaches and results of user studies conducted for the Ontario Council of University Libraries to inform ongoing development of Ontario's Scholars Portal, as well as some recent studies involving individual Ontario universities' explorations of next-generation discovery layers and user-generated content. User motivations were investigated, and some Web 2.0 assumptions were challenged in these studies. Common threads will be discussed in this presentation, and participants will be engaged in thinking about what it all means for their own user environments