Preliminary Survey Results

You may remember that ILS ran a survey in November and December last year. We wanted to know what types of resources you use, how you're using the Fountains building and what physical and digital resources might best support your research.

We have some preliminary results to share.

• 70 of you were invited to take the survey and there were 33 responses (response rate of 47%). 
• You report relatively high levels of awareness of what ILS offers in terms of training and resources but rely most heavily on print books and electronic journals. Correspondingly, you suggest that we purchase more titles.
• 63% think that we should offer more drop-in training. 
• You report low use of the Fountains building and ILS computers and also low awareness of the lockers and the Fountains graduate research area. (For those who are interested in trying it out, it's the glassed-in area on the ground floor of Fountains housing the theses and Victorian children's literature. This area is set aside for graduate research study.)
• 81% of respondents rated ILS’ researcher services as either ‘useful’ or ‘very useful’. There is no significant relationship between how useful respondents rate ILS and your use of services or level of awareness. 

First responses from us: 

• We hear you that you need more books and more electronic access! We're working hard to build our collection and are in the process of budgeting for next year, and hope to only improve the range and depth of our collection. 
• Meantime, there were two suggestions for how to improve communication about the ILL process, and we'll take those into consideration and see if there's more information we can share while you're waiting for materials to arrive from other institutions.
• We've been offering drop-in workshops for researchers this semester and so far, the feedback has been good.

And finally, thanks to all of you who took the time to give us your feedback. As you well know, surveys are imperfect but do offer us a snapshot of needs and perceptions, and we hope to continue gathering information from you to inform our future in ILS. 15 of you gave us your email addresses and we will be contacting you to see if you would be willing to sit down with us after Easter for a more in-depth conversation on what you need in terms of service, training and collections. More details and an open invitation to researchers will follow here and from the Research Office.

Your comments are very welcome.