As promised, we’re sharing some results with you regarding the LibQUAL+ survey (conducted between January 28-February 17) before the end of term. Please note these are preliminary results and a more extensive analysis has yet to be undertaken.

First, we want to thank you for your enthusiastic participation — our response rate jumped to 3608, up from 871 surveys completed in 2010. The Dal Libraries conducts this highly regarded Association of Research Libraries survey every three years, as part of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries consortium. We use the results as a quality control mechanism to assess services, spaces and resources and to make improvements in response.

We are seeing some variety in response data amongst our different user groups (e.g., level of study, discipline, etc.) and will be conducting further data analysis to ensure we fully understand the different needs and perspectives of our diverse user population.

To highlight a strong suit for the Dal Libraries, most respondents were very pleased with our services, particularly when it came to the individual attention they receive from staff and librarians, and with our orientation/instruction sessions.

On a less positive note, many of our user groups were dissatisfied with our physical spaces, both in terms of quiet study space and more welcoming spaces for group study. Within one building, it is always difficult to manage the balance between quiet study space and vibrant, comfortable environments for group work, and our user groups identified the need for both in all five of the Dal Libraries. We will be analyzing this data further to see what changes are possible that will bring the most benefit to our users.

Results indicate that our website is not meeting the needs of some of our users as well, particularly graduate students and faculty. The survey does not provide detailed information regarding the source of the dissatisfaction, and more user experience studies will be required to determine the needs of graduate and faculty users. After we conduct further studies of our website we will implement improvements in the near future and we will welcome your feedback regarding these changes.

Thank you again for participating and helping us to create the Dal Libraries that you need!