Virginia Tech and LibQual+ 2004

a half decade of partnership and the love affair continues…..

LibQual+: A Total Market Survey with 22 Items and a BoxLibQual+: A Total Market Survey with 22 Items and a BoxALA Midwinter Meeting

January 17, 2005 Boston, MA

Eileen E. Hitchingham

Dean University Libraries, Virginia Tech

hitch@vt.edu

Virginia Tech and LibQual+ Virginia Tech and LibQual+ 2004

VT LibQual+ Survey GroupsVT LibQual+ Survey Groups2000- 20052000- 2005

Strategy for getting Strategy for getting participationparticipation

•No incentivesNo incentives

•Bug them a lotBug them a lot

Information Control a library web enabling me to locate information on my own

Information Control

journal collections I require for my work

Information Control the electronic information resources I need

Graduate Students

LibQual+ items for which we don’t meet minimum expectations

Undergraduates

No LibQual+ items with the dread red- don’t meet minimum expectations

When we say ARL average we are comparing to the average of those ARL libraries in the spring 2004 survey…

Everybody uses Everybody uses GoogleGoogle……

Graduate Student Comparisons Graduate Student Comparisons of minimum, perceived, desired on of minimum, perceived, desired on

dimension summariesdimension summaries

VT A public major

research institution

So what have we learned and So what have we learned and what have we done?what have we done?

• With a small staff and not too many $$ we continue to hover around average for ARL’s on the dimensions and overall satisfaction

• Fewer comments regarding copiers came in for 2004 after we did a consolidation fix following the 2003 LibQual+

• Our users were not satisfied with web access prompting a major revision in summer 2004

• Our users found our old PC’s lacking and we added 60 new public PC’s in summer 2004

• Our graduate students are generally satisfied on the affect of service dimension, but not our undergraduates.

• Almost 16% of the comments noted that students – all disciplines, grad, undergrad, wanted a more comfortable, visually appealing library and we are using these comments in the capital project request cycle

• Our undergraduate students use the physical and electronic library less than students in other ARL libraries and we are using this information as part of the input to the core curriculum review

• LibQual+ is useful all year, whatever the discussion we often end up saying “LibQual+ showed us that…..