Uxlibs Project - The Survey

Following on from our first UXLibs project in Lent 2016 - "Love your Library", we thought we would try and gain some further insight to our students study patterns during autumn 2016.  Having seen how other Cambridge libraries had successfully used interviewing techniques, we thought we would give it go and devised a list of questions.

I was keen to ensure that the survey questions weren't initially about the library and were more based on where our students liked to work, what they liked about that particular space, what work they did there and what would improve the space for them.  We then went on to ask questions about the library and whether they used it & why and if not, why?  We also wanted to find out information about the students use of resources, and therefore didn't specifically refer to any particular one, such as library catalogue, ejournals, books, etc, as we wanted to see what they would say.  We were also interested in how they found retrieving the resources, whether in print or online. Finally as the college IT Suite is attached the library we also included questions on their use of the IT Suite and technology, did they used the IT Suite, what for and how long did they stay in the room; where did they do their printing did they use the college wifi and did they use social media?

Sam, @Samaanth70, (my Assistant Librarian) and I decided to do the questioning in pairs to start to see how it went, with the understanding that we would then split up on other days.  However after our first day's surveys we both thought that having someone else to scribe was extremely useful. It meant that the person interviewing could be more engaged with the participants, actively listening, responding to points and asking further probing questions, rather than writing down answers.  The interviews were therefore very fluid, and allowed the interviewer to change the focus of the questions or jump a few questions if the responses related to another issue we wanted to discuss later on.

Taken from the EBTA website

We had also anticipated that we would interview people individually, however in practice most students sit in the Dome (our cafeteria) in groups.  We therefore decided to interview the students in their groups of 3 or 4.  We found this worked very well, it meant that the students encouraged each other to answer the questions and it demonstrated quickly the very different working patterns between different subjects and individuals.  It became apparent during the transcribing afterwards that we needed to remember which students gave what answer.  This wasn't too bad today as we typed up the responses the same day.  However if we don't have time to do that straight away in future we need to give students numbers and number the responses in relation to whose talking.

For me the most interesting findings from our first day were that students don't tend to report the problems they face and assume that it's stuff they have to put up with!  ie. slow computers in the IT Suite, heaters not working in rooms.  Fortunately this seemed more prevalent for students working in their own rooms rather than our library.  Students told us they did come and ask library staff for help, presumably because we are on hand and hopefully approachable.

An unsurprising point that came out is that students were conditioned by previous interactions with people and library staff in particular.  A previous bad experience, still resides when using a new library, for example, scared of coming in when they had overdue books.

Taken from The Cotton Ball Conspiracy Word Press Site (22.04.2014)

Another common element was the minimal use of the IT Suite.  All the students, except one said they only logged onto  the managed cluster machines to print.  This meant they were only in the Room for 5 minutes each time.  One student said that if printing could be sent from her laptop to the library printer that would be better.  This evidence coincidences with the data usage of the room obtained from the IT Manager.  The one student, who said they would use the IT Suite didn't, as the machines were too slow and it was easier to use her laptop.

Lego heater model produced at Lego Workshop in Cambridge

We found the surroundings were very important for different individuals wherever they preferred to work, although they had common elements such as warmth and light. Some students commented they could control the heating in their rooms, where as another had the under desk heaters on in the library. Our under desk heaters also came to light at Andy Priestner's Lego Workshop, as one student there said it was their favourite thing about our library. Another commented that students moved within the library at night, as it was warmer in the basement.  3 students loved the light, bright space of the library and found it helped them study during the day, although they also made comments about the desk lighting at night being too low and not throwing enough light upwards.  As this is an original feature I'm not sure how we'll be able to resolve this.

Another common aspect which mirrored the findings of the UL Futurelib project was that students don't like sitting next to each other and prefer to have the desk to themselves.  Space wise this does pose a problem as most of our seating is a desk surrounded by four seats.

We could see there was a definite divide between the arts & humanities and the science & technology students. The arts and humanities students we surveyed today mainly used the library to work, unless they wanted to type up an essay, whereas the science students preferred working in their rooms, where they had their notes and didn't use the library that much as they didn't tend to borrow books.

One comment which was lovely to hear was that Wednesday tea and coffee was "a big draw" for working in the library.  Another commented that they came to tea and coffee for the break even if they were working in their room.

After such an interesting day speaking to our students, I'm excited to see what else comes to light as our project progresses this month.