ABSTRACT
The advent of e-journals and databases provides users and librarians with an unprecedented opportunity to integrate the tools for finding information with the information itself. With these old resources in new formats, innovation has a new ally in the form of increased information about users’ habits and preferences. The popularity of the Internet and a growing one-click mentality is driving librarians and vendors to collaborate in order to design products that provide more seamless access to resources and services. In addition, research on e-journals, databases, and users’ information seeking behaviors has influenced both librarians’ methods of description and organization and the development of library-specific products and tools. The increased amount of data about user behavior that is supplied by e-resources providers has enhanced the information professional’s ability to design tools and organize information in a way that makes sense to the average user. This chapter will explore how the partnership between information professionals and information users (or library patrons) has shaped the integration and acceptance of e-resources and management tools throughout the last few decades. These interactions have provided invaluable insights into patrons’ genuine usage patterns. Furthermore, users, whose roles have been historically reduced to passive information recipients, have benefited by becoming participants in the process of knowledge dissemination.
