Project Briefing: Spring 2005 Task Force Meeting
----------

 

LibQUAL™, Libraries and Google™:
What Do We Know About the Use Patterns Of Our Faculty,
Graduate Students and Undergraduates?

Martha Kyrillidou
Program Officer for Statistics and Measurement
Association of Research Libraries (ARL)

Jonathan D. Sousa
Technical Applications Development Manager
Association of Research Libraries (ARL)

Fred M. Heath
Vice Provost and Director of Libraries
University of Texas at Austin


The LibQUAL+™ protocol includes three questions regarding use of information resources: (a) how often do you use resources on library premises? (b) How often do you access library resources through a library Web page? and (c) How often do you use Yahoo™, Google™, or non-library gateways for information? This session will involve discussing the findings from the ‘use’ questions we have in the LibQUAL+™ survey and attempt to understand what these findings mean for libraries. More than 200,000 users from hundreds of institutions responded to the LibQUAL+™ survey in 2003 and 2004 and the trends for these questions are revealing.

ARL Statistics have documented declining circulation, reference and inhouse use figures. The updated series comparing university and library expenditures also shows shrinking library budgets (http://www.arl.org/stats/eg/chart17.pdf and http://www.arl.org/stats/eg/chart40.pdf). Yet libraries are doing more in the digital area as we are capturing data with some of our new measures. Can we mainstream our new measures fast enough to demonstrate the vitality of the services libraries provide? What does LibQUAL+™ tell us as to how often faculty, graduate students and undergraduates use non-library gateways over time? How should we evaluate these trends in the face of new developments like the availability of Google Scholar and other research library content becoming available through similar partnerships? The discussion for the session will focus on the interpretation of the LibQUAL+™ trends and how libraries can manage user expectations in the Google™ era.

Web Links:
http://www.libqual.org
http://www.arl.org/stats/