Summer 2007 survey results available

The results of our Summer 2007 survey indicate that we need to make it easier to find our stuff -- books, articles, journals, etc.  People come to our website to find our stuff and get confused about where to search or lost in a maze of pop-up windows.  Making the process of finding our books, journals, articles, etc. much simpler and more transparent needs to be a priority.

Looking over the detailed results, we find the following trends:

Question 4: The last time you used the Libraries' website, what did you need to do?

75% of our primary users last used our site to find a book or article.  That's pretty much "well, duh!" but it does highlight that people do not use our site to find our carefully crafted subject guides or whatever.  Their purpose is to find our stuff.  Improving the look and feel of the website may make us feel better, but if we don't improve the search functions, our primary users won't be happy.

Question 5: The last time you searched for a book or article via the Libraries' website, were you looking for:

A further breakdown of the results by status indicates that Undergraduates search by subject; Graduate students and faculty more by author/title.  We will have to come up with a quality search that facilitates general keyword searching while also allowing for good author and title search results.

Question 7: How would you like the Libraries to recommend resources to you via the website for use in your research (class paper, scholarly article, etc.)?  (Check all that apply)

No great consensus on subject vs. class pages vs. wizard recommender.  Although undergraduates do prefer the class pages.  And broad, general pages rated the lowest.  Comments indicate that not everyone understood the question and that some people don't want to be recommended stuff anyway.

Question 8: Which of the following projects would most improve our website?  (Choose one)

Undergraduates want overall better navigation; faculty and grad student want a single search for print and online journal titles.  This all ties back to the fact that faculty and grad students are looking for known items and undergraduates are not.

Question 9: How would you like us to improve the Libraries' catalogs (LibCat and Chiron)?    (Check all that apply)

Everyone wants easier searching by subject or keyword but they also want better browsing by author, title, subject.

Question 10: How do you prefer to keep and organize the resources you've found for your research (class paper, scholarly article, etc.?  (Check all that apply)

Nobody's tagging.  In fact, very few people are doing anything fancy.  They're mostly just e-mailing or downloading/printing.  Less than 40% of faculty and grad students use EndNotes and less than 25% use the Libraries' bookbags.

Question 11: How do you prefer to communicate with the Libraries?  (Check all that apply)

No great interest in Facebook or texting.  People mostly want to talk to us in person or via email.

Looking through the comments, it's clear that we've got to do something about all the pop-ups.  Other issues I see are:

• continuing problems finding journal articles.  People don't like or understand the current process.  In many cases, they can't even explain where thing went wrong because they're so confused.
• continuing problems searching LibCat, some of it due to LibCat search issues and some due to people looking for articles.
• navigation issues - people not being able to find things (how to renew books, frex) - that are already there.
  

Bennett