What services and resources are important to our library users, and how successfully do the libraries deliver them?
Many library users will soon receive an email invitation from Regina Mays, the Libraries’ Head of Assessment Programs, to participate in an online survey designed to answer those questions. On January 31, invitations will go out to random samples of faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, and staff. If you receive an email, please accept our invitation. This is your opportunity to tell us how we’re doing and how we can improve.
This will be the second time that the UT Libraries has participated in the MISO (Measuring Information Services Outcomes) Survey. Here are a few things we learned from surveying our users in 2017:
A high percentage of faculty, grad students, and undergraduates use our databases at least once a semester (87%, 84%, and 75%, respectively). Far fewer use the print collections (65%, 53%, 48%).
Of the targeted populations, faculty expressed the greatest level of satisfaction with library services overall (86%).
60% of undergraduates visit Hodges Library at least once a week.
Most undergrads take advantage of the library’s quiet study spaces (88%) and group study spaces (82%).
We asked our users about the level of importance they assign to various library resources as well as their level of satisfaction. Their responses drove some enhancements to library spaces over the past two years:
Undergraduates assigned the highest importance (77.8%) to “electrical outlets,” and we added additional outlets to the central seating areas on floors 3 through 6.
Graduate students were less satisfied than undergraduates with quiet study spaces and with the libraries’ physical comfort. This finding provided additional support for our plans to expand graduate student-specific space in the library with a Graduate Commons, to open later this semester.
Help us stay informed about your information needs. Let us know what you think of our current services and resources. Your survey responses can make a difference.
The MISO Survey will be open from January 31 through February 11, 2019.