knock, knock… knocking… on our’s users’door:

1. knock,knock… knocking… on our’s users’door: the information policy at Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle regioni Lazio e Toscana (IZS-LT): a case study Cristina FERRI, Gabriella LOFFREDO, Patrizia GRADITO, Arianna MICONI, Antonella Italia BOZZANO. Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Regioni Lazio e Toscana, Via Appia Nuova, 1411 – 00178 Roma – Italy • INTRODUCTION • The Library and Documentation Centre in IZS LT, an Italian Veterinary Public Board, has adopted an opening and pushing policy towards its territory, by designing and carrying out information handling services on a free basis targeted to the veterinary operators of the National Sanitary System (SSN). • MATERIALS AND METHODS • The action: • Punctual current awareness services have been performed aiming at meeting the implicit information needs of the SSN operators. • The motive: • These users claim a critical time management and inadequate information resources. The focus has been on the denied access to several specialized journals and legislative resources. • The way: • Our Library has conceived a dedicated informative offer: a monthly Review on scientific journals providing an abstract of 15 selected articles. The article selection was carried out on the basis of well-determined parameters: • Relevance and topical interest of the themes (BSE, GMO, etc) • Quality and authoritativeness of the journals to be sorted • Alert on the innovations as to the legislative provisions published in the specialized journals • The right ratio between typically scientific articles and operative, practical articles • Attention to provide and grant information in each different food sector • The review is provided via e-mail to the SSN operators, the Universities, the veterinary free-lance and other users. The full text is supplied on demand on a free basis. The users amount to 300. The review is published on the Institute website. • RESULTS • Hereinafter the usage reports, the trend and customer satisfaction analysis related to these services Fig. n. I: number of full text articles delivered from 2002 to 2005 Fig. n. II: number of full text articles delivered on the average per month from 2002 to the half- year in 2006 Fig. n. III: number of users requesting full text articles on the average from 2002 to the half- year in 2006 • CONCLUSIONS • The results obtained together with the users’ daily informal feedback and a Customer Satisfaction survey show a significant satisfaction rate in meeting an actual informative need • The Library has addressed its attention to latent and potential users, therefore to those people that could not enjoy the documentation services, thus increasing the number of its present users • This analysis urges the Library to design and conceive much more user-oriented information services Territorial Breakdown of the users Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Regioni Lazio e Toscana biblioteca@izslt.it When a “user-friendly” Library knocks on the user’s door, it often receives a warm welcome