Satisfaction Survey University Library KU Leuven

For the second time all KU Leuven libraries ask their customers about the quality of the service using an online survey that you can fill in between 20th of February and 30^th of March 2012. With this survey, the University Library hopes to get a clear picture of the expectations of its customers and the way they already meet them.

All KU Leuven students and staff members will receive an e-mailed invitation to participate in the survey. The questionnaire is available in Dutch and English, and is considerably shorter in comparison with 3 years ago. Participants can win a iPad 2 (16 GB) or one of the 10 book vouchers. The responses will be kept completely confidential.

The University Library uses the standardized questionnaire of LibQUAL +. This survey was designed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

 By participating in this survey the University Library will be able to benchmark the results of its survey with that of similar institutions in Belgium and abroad and with the results of the 2008 survey. The results (and action plans) will be published on the website of the University Library.

 Surf to www.libqual.be for more information.

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Students overestimate their research skills

Google is incredibly popular among students, however their research skills are not always adequate. The Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries Project (ERIAL) examined the research strategies of students in five universities in Illinois. The complete results will soon be published as ‘Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know’ by the American Library Association (ALA).

Also a remarkable finding of the survey is that students barely ask questions in libraries. This is because students overestimate their own research skills. If they cannot find anything, they do not realize they might have used the wrong research strategy.

More preliminary results of the survey can be found here.

Source: Informatieprofessional.nl

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Survey Europeana

Europeana enables people to explore the digital resources and audio-visual collections of Europe’s museums, libraries and archives. The results of a survey among more than 5000 users of Europeana, were recently published. According to the respondents of this Europeana Online Visitor Survey, the content of Europeana is much more useful and reliable compared to similar websites.

More information can be found in the summary or the full report.

Source: Europeana and Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek.

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E-reading for all

A first large scale survey that looked into the e-reading habits of people in Flanders shows that the majority of the inquired persons prefers reading on paper above e-reading. However,  people who hold a tablet use it mostly to read the news or magazines. 60% of the persons who own a reading device, are willing to pay to access unique digital information. 40% would be willing to pay to read their favorite magazine in digital form, when a paper copy would be no longer published.

These findings are the result of the ‘From e-reader to e-reading’ – project, conducted by Memori, a research center from Hogeschool Lessius. The goal was to examine how news and magazine editors can adequately respond to the e-reading trend. In a online-survey this spring 2270 persons were questioned about their interests, expectations and their willingness to pay regarding e-reading.

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Library undertakes action

In the light of the Libqual user survey of 2008, the University Library analyzed the results in the course of 2009, and translated it into action. 

Some of these actions have already been started, or have been completed, others are still in progress. Some of them are very visible, the others went behind the scenes:

• In order to consult electronic journals and databases from outside a K.U.Leuven building ICTS set up a new proxy server. It has been active since May 2009.
• The demand for more e-resources was answered by the purchase of more e-journals for the Human and Social Sciences: all magazines of the publishers Sage, Taylor & Francis, full text access to all publications and statistics of the OECD, a larger offer full text journals through JSTOR, Muse, and more e-books ….
• In the course of 2009, it was decided to build a learning center in the city centre, in addition to the study areas that the libraries already provide. Projected date of completion: September 2012.
• In 2009 a great deal of infrastructure adjustments were made to the libraries that make it easier for students to work in the libraries: enlargement of the number of group work rooms, extra outlets for working with the laptops, new cloakrooms, noise-reducing walls and others
• The libraries in the city centre have extended their opening hours during the exam period.
• Since mid-December 2009 you can look on www.blokkeninleuven.be to check in which library seats are still available.
• In the course of 2010 you will be able to locate every book or journal, in the library catalogue, through a floor plan. This locator-feature exists already in some of the libraries, but will be extended to more libraries.
• In June 2009 a long-term cooperation project for front desk officers (1 per library) started in which customer orientation and quality of service are the main topics.
• Since December 2009, all desk employees attend workshops on being customer friendly.

 The results and conclusions of the Libqual user survey can be read on www.libqual.be.

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