Posts tagged with qualitative 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.

Between March 20 and August 31, 2020, the University of Michigan Press made all the titles in the Library-hosted ebook collection, UMP EBC, free-to-read. During this period, U-M Press staff gathered use data in the hope of assessing the impact of free-to-read content while informing the future business strategy. Three different assessment efforts are described in this post.

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.

How does one get valid data without traumatizing or alienating students and faculty in a trying time? According to this author, by taking an empathetic approach to planning and implementing an assessment project, you can minimize negative impacts to your community.

In three blog posts, the authors describe a multi-year library service design project. This last post describes the team’s prototyping and testing processes, and our resulting interactive exercise.

In three blog posts, the authors describe a multi-year library service design project. This second post describes the research process used to develop our user experience tool.

In three blog posts, the authors describe a multi-year library service design project. This first post describes the origins and goals of the assessment project.

A project team charged with providing staff training activities approached the project assessment with an iterative design lens, allowing for responsive and timely development of multiple opportunities for staff engagement around organizational and personal change. The team tried out different assessment techniques related to the opportunities offered.

How can we improve the familiarity and credibility between Library experts, resources and services we offer and the students, faculty and staff who use them? Whether we’re building new relationships or reconnecting with patrons/colleagues during assessment or user research activities, we have the opportunity to use certain marketing and communication best practices and tools during our user research to align clear and targeted communication with our key audiences.