Creative Communities - BC Library Conference 2015

It's become easier than ever to survey your library's stakeholders; online survey tools such as Survey Monkey have made it possible for anyone to create and disseminate questionnaires, and more and more of the people we serve are online. Moreover, the ways in which libraries report to their stakeholders has shifted in recent years, from traditional metrics such as input and output statistics, to measures of effectiveness, i.e. outcomes and impact--further necessitating the use of qualitative research methods such as questionnaires. As the result, it's more important than ever for library professionals to be proficient in survey design, administration, and analysis, so that we might strive towards the gold standard when conducting our research, and act confidently on the data that we collect. In this session, we’ll summarize and present the leading library assessment literature and review the best practices for survey design, distribution, and data analysis. We’ll then compare these to our recent experience at the Squamish Public Library, designing and administering the 2013 Community Input Survey, as a means to gather information about our users’ expectations, experiences, and values. Beyond just collecting these data, we’ll also talk about how we incorporated this information into our strategic plan, and the ways in which we’ve acted on this information to date.