Kirsty Williamson
Director, Information and Telecommunications Needs Research, School of Information Management and Systems, Monash University and School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 197, Caulfield East, Vic, 3145, Australia
Email: kirsty.williamson@sims.monash.edu.au
Steven Wright
Research Fellow, Information and Telecommunications Needs Research, School of Information Management and Systems, Monash University, PO Box 197, Caulfield East, Vic, 3145, Australia
Email: steven.wright@sims.monaahs.edu.au
Frada Burstein
Associate Professor, School of Information Management and Systems, Monash University, PO Box 197, Caulfield East, Vic, 3145, Australia
Email: frada.burstein@sims.monash.edu.au
Don Schauder
Professor and Chair, Information and Telecommunications Needs Research, School of Information Management and Systems, Monash University, PO Box 197, Caulfield East, Vic, 3145, Australia
Email: don.schauder@sims.monash.edu.au
The project on which this article is based set out to evaluate—using an interpretivist/ constructivist framework—the content, usability, and use of the four online databases that were introduced into Victorian public libraries under the Gulliver Program. The grounded nature of the method enabled the discovery of key issues that were not always related to the quality of the databases themselves. Since Everett Rogers’ famous analysis of the diffusion of innovations appeared to have explanatory value in this context, his theory was used to illuminate the findings. This was despite the fact that an individual was not involved in this case but rather the State Library of Victoria making a decision to adopt an innovation on behalf of the public libraries of Victoria. The researchers believed that Rogers’ framework could be used to shed light on why both staff and library patrons were slow in accepting or adopting online databases for their information seeking. The conclusion is that training is the principal way in which this situation could be changed.
Williamson, K., Wright, S., Burstein, F. & Schauder, D. (2003). Adoption of online databases in public libraries : an Australian case study. Library and Information Science Research E-Journal, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.32655/LIBRES.2003.2.2