LibQUAL+ or Why it is important to understand statistical significance… August 24, 2007
Posted by Ian in academia, libraries, QEII.3 comments
Yesterday a session was held to go over the results from our most recent iteration of the LibQUAL+ library quality survey. For those of you not in the know LibQUAL+ is a massive survey put out by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The aim is to measure perceptions of the library in three broad categories: Service, Collections/Technical Services, and Library as Place (aka facilities). In the survey users are asked about a variety of functions and for each to give a number between one and ten to represent the minimum level of that service that the user would expect, then to give a number between one and ten to represent how the library is actually doing and finally, a number between one and ten to represent the users desired level for the item in question. Statistics are then gathered about the gaps between minimum and perception, as well as between perception and desired. Libraries are then supposed to go out and use these stats as indicators for what needs fixing, as well as use them to compare their situation with other similar sized universities. The survey is very broad and its usefulness is dubious at best but what really gets me is the sample size chosen when we completed our survey.
Memorial has about 17000 students add in faculty and administration and there are probably closer to 19000 users (probably even more than that). Now considering that most surveys get between 20-30% response rate one would think that you would want to send the survey to as many users as possible. But no, we sent the survey to 5500 users… that’s about 29% of our users in total. Our response rate was 18% or about 890. 890 out of 19000… That is 5% roughly of our user base and yet this is a tool that is supposed to be meaningful? You cannot base any decision on what 5% of your user base thinks.
Here’s something really depressing for the math nerds out there. For the most part the numerical data that is gathered in this survey is mostly ignored – or people will say “look our users gave us a score of 8 in [insert service thing here]” when the actual score is meaningless for comparison purposes.
Now some say that this tool is a good basis for historical comparisons. I say hogwash! For one thing you are not surveying the same people over time. The users you have now may have very different expectations from the users you have 5 years from now. Even if it were possible to survey the same cohort every year, I think you might find that the results would not be consistent as user needs evolved and changed.
If libraries and librarians want to do serious research more of us need to be more conversant in the language of statistics and we need to invest more time in thinking about experimental design.
Cataloguing standards: e-books and websites August 17, 2007
Posted by Ian in QEII.1 comment so far
This is an appeal for those looking at library cataloguing standards right now please in the future keep it simple! The nature of my gripe:
Last year we bought 12,000 Springer titles as e-books. Right now we have access to… 3,000… And why is our access so piss poor? Well that’s a good question. Apparently this is what vaguely transpired (I wasn’t here so I’ve had to piece this account together from others):
The Springer offer was quite reasonable buy all the 2006 titles get the 2004 and 2005 gratis. Springer said they would provide MARC records and everything would be fine. Well our cataloguing people looked at the records and deemed them unusable. So we took our business elsewhere. We bought the books from a different vendor with the express understanding that suitable records would be provided. Well they haven’t been provided yet because the company we bought the books from can’t get them. The original Springer records were rejected because they were mostly only skeletal records that our already over stretched cataloguers would have to go and edit afterwards to make them compliant with current cataloguing practice.
The problem is that we have paid for 12,000 books and as it stands we can’t really use any of them.
SO what do I want? Simple I want a skeletal record that contains the following information: Title, author, link. At least then the records would be searchable in our catalogue and our users could access the material.
For electronic resources I don’t need to know pagination of the equivalent paper copy, I don’t need notes and as a start I’m not sure I even need subjects since most people don’t bother to change their search options. But I do need access and presently I don’t have that. So for all you cataloguers out there in the world maybe it is time to start thinking about changing your workflow perhaps it’s time we started putting the need for a record ahead of our desire for perfect records. And on the reference side it’s high time we learned to live with imperfect catalogue records…
[some screaming goes here]
Things to know about the library July 16, 2007
Posted by Ian in QEII.add a comment
Today I got a call from a certain news organization looking for a picture of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Billy Graham the televangelist. The person calling assumed that because the library was called the Queen Elizabeth II library we must have some connection to the monarchy, we must have an archive with the information she was seeking… I hate to rain on everyone’s parade but the QEII Library was named after Her Majesty in the same way that my elementary school was named after the Queen and has just as much to do with her.
Long story short: if you want information about the Queen go here - they’ll be a damn sight more helpful than us.
