Comments on: Do Library Staff Know What The Users Want?

By: Kathy Dempsey

Kathy Dempsey — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:15:46 +0000

This study proves yet again the importance of “true marketing,” which always begins with studying users (and nonusers) and learning what they want and expect from you.

Libraries that make it a priority to listen to users (as Molly’s and Cheryl’s admirably do) will experience less of a disconnect. I don’t need any more studies to tell me that!

I have a chart showing the Cycle of True Marketing on my website at librariesareessential.com/library-marketing-resources/cycle-of-true-marketing. It follows standard business-improvement and practices.

By: Cheryl Bryan

Cheryl Bryan — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:37:25 +0000

Having conducted many user information forums as part of libraries long range planning efforts I think your responses are on target here. If the disparity were between “user services” and ‘internal functions” that would be a problem; but when the disparity is between focus on creating a good user experience and using the library’s resources that seems only natural to me. Another thing I’ve noticed is that survey respondents often consider what is expected of them-academic library users might feel “smarter” if their focus is on research content access.

By: » Comparing Service Priorities Between Staff and Users in ARL Member Libraries

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:54:30 +0000

[...] via Designing Better Libraries [...]

By: Noa K

Noa K — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:31:04 +0000

I had the same response as Andromeda (after reading the article). If the usual is great service, one might take it for granted and not see it as a priority. Look, too, at the library staff “moderately low” priority score to providing “printed library materials” and “electronic information resources.” I can imagine the staffers’ bias, “Collection development? That’s a given — we’re adding value with great service.”

By: Molly Raphael

Molly Raphael — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:33:53 +0000

It’s interesting to see how often we can see parallel issues in different types of libraries. The questions that the LibQUAL survey addressed highlight how our best intentions as library staff can send us on a detour when we try to address user priorities. In the public library world, we have been doing outreach to underserved populations, with the goal of transforming the lives of populations we want to serve. In my own experience, we decided to undertake some research to learn what some immigrant communities thought was most important of the services we had to offer. We used focus groups and interviews with community leaders in three immigrant populations: Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian. What we learned from that research made us totally change the way we purchased materials and planned programs and services. The shift, which took time and also involved hiring bilingual/bicultural staff, resulted in making real connections with these parts of the population of our county.

By: Andromeda

Andromeda — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:03:52 +0000

I have to wonder (not, I admit, having read the article) if user priorities may not be so much an expression of users’ highest values but of the things they have experienced as most lacking — and thus might be in an inverse relationship with librarians’ values…That is, if librarians value affective elements highly, perhaps they do such a good job with them that users never really notice a problem with them, so there isn’t an insistent voice in their heads saying “man, I wish librarians were nicer”. Perhaps if these librarians focused more on information and less on affect, we’d find that user priorities shifted in reverse… (Guess this is why baselines and longitudinal studies are nice.)