User Survey Team – Meeting Minutes
March 26, 2012
Present: John Amrhein, Steve Berbig, William Glenn, Uday Karkai, Colleen Kenefick
ONE-QUESTION SURVEY
The group reviewed the 20 responses so far to the One-Question Survey sent out to staff. The
responses are available on the Wiki. And there is a tag cloud:
http://guides.library.stonybrook.edu/usersurveyteam
William will send out [has now sent out] a second notice to staff, asking them to participate.
We would like to send out the same question, slightly revised, to the two Faculty Advisory groups. And
would also like to ask the question on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.
LITERATURE REVIEW
William revised the wiki, adding a new section called LITERATURE REVIEW. This now includes the actual
study conducted by the University of Rochester that the article “An Anthropologist in the Library” was
about that we read for the previous meeting.
Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester
http://hdl.handle.net/1802/7520
It also includes a new survey released last week that was conducted by the University of Connecticut
Libraries:
Assessment 360: Mapping Undergraduates and the Library at the University of Connecticut
Executive Summary: http://www.clir.org/pubs/resources/Assessment360exsum.pdf
Full Report: http://www.clir.org/pubs/resources/Assessment360.pdf
The group looked at parts of the report, especially some of the questions they asked. This is an excellent
work and I highly recommend that everyone read through it.
STUDENT WORKER FOCUS GROUPS
We decided on having two focus groups of 5 to 6 students each – if possible.
We will meet with each group once, for an hour, though it can go a little longer if it seems like the
students are into it.
We would like to do the focus groups the week of April 16, 2012.
[We didn’t discuss WHERE we would be doing the focus groups. Any ideas?]
Andrew spoke with the ADs about using student workers. They have not decided yet how the students
are to be compensated. If it’s an hour of their working time, what about students assigned to public
service areas? Andrew will get back to us soon. He is aware of the target date.
The User Survey Team proposes offering food, maybe pizza, and perhaps a $10 gift certificate to
Starbucks or Seawolves.
It was decided that the focus groups would concentrate on two main areas – how students spend their
time and what technologies they’re using and how. Here’s a sketch of what we would like to do:
1.
2.
How are the students spending their time?
a. In general
b. Doing research
c. In the library
What technologies are they using and how?
a. In general
b. Doing research
c. In the library
It’s recommended that everyone review the questions asked in the University of Connecticut Survey Full
Report – in the Appendices.
We can all come up with questions to cover these areas, but we assigned Uday and Darren, specifically,
to come up with some questions for the 2nd section on technology.
Steve, John, Diane and Ken should try to come up with questions for the first section.
We would like to have a way of compiling questions in one place, where they can be reviewed, changed,
etc. Is everyone comfortable using Google Docs for this?
Fiona will talk to TLT about using some of their student workers in the focus groups, as we discussed at
the earlier meeting.
Darren can provide Google Analytics statistics on web site usage before our next meeting.
LARGE-SCALE SURVEY
The group decided on a target release date of October 15 for the large-scale survey.
William will talk with the Center for Survey Research – Find out about the second study they did for the
library (evidently, before the one in 2009); get pricing; and discuss with them the process of how we
work with them on devising the questions. He will also find out who in the library was involved in the
2009 survey and talk with them about the process.
Fiona will investigate Lib-Qual – Get information (from Nathan?) on how the previous Lib-qual survey
was done in the library; pricing; and a general sense of how they work.
OTHER ISSUES
John has done some reading on how focus groups are conducted. He will send out parts of the book to
the rest of the group. In general, it’s recommended that there are 8-12 people in each group and four
different groups to give variety. We should keep this in mind when we begin working on the External
Focus Groups.
We had a good discussion about space problems on campus. There are few places on West Campus,
and it’s even worse at HSC.
Where do people go to socialize on campus? Where are they doing group study work? We should keep
this in mind as we devise questions for the student focus groups on how they spend their time. We’d
like to get a sense of their use of physical space.
William showed a free project management tool – Trello – wondering if it would be useful to the full
group. If everyone registers, we can use this to keep track of everything we’re doing. We didn’t really
reach a decision, though my sense was that people didn’t think it was necessary.
To register and see what it‘s like – trello.com
Next Meeting: It will be later the week of Spring Break or the following week. At that meeting, we will
finalize our questions. Why don’t we meet face-to-face this time, since we’ll have a lot to cover and
discuss. West Campus. After that, I think we can start doing virtual meetings.
William will send out a Doodle schedule.