Posts tagged with interview in Blog Tiny Studies

This blog post reflects on the work of students to explore the collection-related needs of undergraduate students, through surveys and interviews.

Source evaluation is an important skill in our information landscape, which is why librarians teach this concept to students during course-integrated information literacy sessions. As part of an IMLS grant, our research team is conducting a two part study to understand the impact of library instruction on students’ evaluation of sources. In this post, we discuss the use of a questionnaire and role-playing interviews to learn more about students’ confidence in their evaluation abilities.

U-M Library’s Library Search launched in 2018 as a unified search engine application containing five previously distinct interfaces: Catalog, Articles, Databases, Online Journals, and Library Websites. Library Search was a big change for users, and an increase in user support requests suggested that further exploration was needed to pinpoint user pain points. The authors began an exploratory study that helped understand users’ experiences and identified areas for continued work.

Assessment and research activities focused on the U-M Library faculty, staff, and student experiences are happening regularly, and often the Library Human Resources (LHR) team is contributing to these activities if not leading the research. This work can focus on quantitative data, qualitative data, or take a hybrid approach, and can involve surveys, interviews, and/or some general number-crunching. This post looks over some recent HR assessment projects.

“Learning from Advanced Student Staff Experiences” was a University of Michigan Library study conducted in 2017, integrating methodologies of user­-centered design and critical librarianship.

In the second of two posts, Informationists from the Taubman Health Sciences Library share their research project to improve library integration within the U-M School of Nursing curriculum. Using a mixed methods approach, they are investigating undergraduate student information seeking needs and behaviors.