A newsletter for patrons of the Galter Health Sciences Library

Fall 2005
New Series #38

Inside this Issue:

Director's Report: Responding to LibQUAL+ Survey Comments

Meet the Staff

The Health SmartLibrary: Better than Ever

Collections: Current and Future Directions

Linking from Databases to Full-text Articles

Computing @ the Library

Library Services: Document Delivery, Hours, and More

Study Space: Meeting the Needs of Groups and Individuals

This Issue

Previous Issues

Credits

Galter Library Web Site

Contact Us

Responding to LibQUAL+ Survey Comments

James Shedlock, AMLS, Director, j-shedlock@northwestern.edu

Last spring we reported on the results of the Galter Library’s LibQUAL+ survey that measures the quality of library collections and services. For the most part, the survey results indicated that users perceive the Galter Library in a positive way when it comes to quality collections and services. That’s not to say everything is perfect. Far from it, and users have told us what they think is good and not so good about the Galter Library in the survey’s comments section.

The purpose of this issue of Library Notes is to respond to some of those comments. Librarians have written articles that address users' comments by topic or theme. These articles provide some background information that may help to explain why services are delivered in certain ways. We want you to know that we are listening to your concerns and ideas for improvement. We can tell you what we are planning to do, or tell you why some ideas need to wait before implementation. We hope to shed some light on users’ concerns by sharing our perspective and what we can or cannot do about specific problems facing the library.

Quality Staff

We received many positive comments about the staff including specific references to individuals and what good work they do for users. We really appreciate these comments as they motivate us to do more and remind the staff that our work has a direct impact on users. A sample of these comments include:"“I find the Galter Library Staff to be helpful and all with a friendly smile.”

"The staff is consistently knowledgeable and very helpful, often making suggestions that make my work much easier."

"Keep up [the] good work and many thanks for your services."

"The Galter Library and esp. the staff are always responsive to my information needs and are superb academic colleagues. It's a pleasure to work with the Galter staff."

"Everyone I've encountered on the staff has been very helpful, willing to help, and exceptionally pleasant to work with."

"I am a librarian who no longer works in the field. Above all else, I value a library staff (professional and parprofessional /support) who provide friendly, timely, and trustworthy service. I have found the Galter staff to be exemplary in their interactions with myself and those in the department where I am employed as a research administrator."

There were also some negative comments received from users. We read in the survey that some staff members are loud, and messages about overdue books that have been returned are rude. Another major concern is the inability of staff to respond to email suggestions leaving users in limbo of not knowing whether anyone is listening to them. Some comments also indicated that staff are not skilled to teach students life-long learning habits, nor are they educated in basic sciences to help introduce faculty and students to online tools in genomics or related fields.

Certainly, we can address the noise issue (see our article on study space elsewhere in this issue). We know staff must be better at communication. All requests, either in-person, via a phone call, or email, deserve a response, even one that says the library cannot provide an answer. As for teaching skills, staff are very committed to teaching users how to manage their information needs, and our teaching program has been enhanced these past few years to do just that. We are always committed to working with our users in a collaborative manner. As for science knowledge, we are in the process of hiring a biosciences librarian to help us address services that require more than a general knowledge of scientific data sources.

LibQUAL+ Survey

Some users’ comments pointed out that the survey was too long and redundant: “ Survey WAY to long and repetitive”, and “I only answered the first set of questions as I feel they are only reworded in the sets following. My answers can be applied to the others, if necessary.” In fact, the 2005 survey is the shortest ever – just 22 questions compared to the 55 questions asked in the 2001 survey. As for redundancy, questions are purposely re-phrased in order to measure reliability and validity. Also, since the survey is measuring quality in three dimensions – library as place, information control, and affect of services – multiple questions are needed for each dimension. As such, some overlap and rephrasing takes place to accurately measure individual perception. The LibQUAL+ survey has created a whole literature of its own that addresses the redundancy issue and many others to prove that the survey can report reliable and valid data.