Vesna Vuksan

PhD Candidate, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, SerbiaSenior Librarian, University Library “Svetozar Markovic”, University of Belgrade, Serbia

My passions revolve around user experiences and evidence-based services and librarianship.  In my 14-year career in libraries, from public to university, I’ve focused my efforts on working with audience prior to working for them. In today’s whirlwind of continuing rapid technology development, it inevitably intails constant communication and research of their behavior in information and digital world. There are three major aspects to this development: new technology, and the potential for new services that it brings; evolving demands of library users; and librarians’ own new expectations for education and training.

In past few years I started researching behavior of students’ reading in different settings: from paper to digital. There have been significant changes of attitude towards reading and learning due to a huge gap between the nature of communication via diverse media and the mental process of adopting the content and new knowledge. In my 2016 training course “Social Media and Digital Storytelling”, accredited by the National Library of Serbia, my team investigates how changing the digital storytelling approach and elements can influence readers’ level of  involvement with information.

My interests also include new forms of creative experimentation in fiction and storytelling such as social media instant novel writing e.g. Twitter fiction and readers’ experiences and effects. In addition, my doctoral research focuses on studying user behavior in a digital world; how digital reading influences digital literacy; discrepancy between the types of literacy experiences students encounter at school and in their daily lives; challenges in building a bi-literate brain that has the wiring for deep reading skills, and is also versed with technology; how technology navigates the expectations of library patrons and  how librarians take on new roles in digital age.