Library approval ratings
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Library approval ratings
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Library Leadership Network Peer Panel, July/August 2008
- edited by Frank Hermes, published August 11, 2008
It's easy to tell we are in the middle of an election year—a day doesn’t pass without our hearing the results of one poll or another. Which gave us the idea: if the libraries we run held a “favorable/unfavorable” poll, what would be the results? We turned to the Peer Panel, asking them:
- What do you believe the approval rating for your library (or organization) is from the perspective of your “customers?” Use a 0-100% measurement.
- What causes it to be at that level (pluses and minuses)?
- What are you doing to improve it?
Their responses approach the topic from many different angles, but all have grains of wisdom for library leaders.
Jamie LaRue
As it happens, we recently did a phone survey, so I can answer the first question precisely. We serve a region of 300,000 people; the sample size of 400 gave us a +/-4% confidence level. The results: we got a 93% approval rating: 54% very satisfied and 39% somewhat satisfied.
Here's the kicker though: we asked that question to test the willingness of voters to support a modest mill levy increase--about $30 a year for the average house. And the results of that: about 50-50.
So I've been thinking a lot about the difference between use of the library (which is indeed driving our approval rating, I believe), and support of the library. I have concluded that OCLC's From Awareness to Funding is correct: there is no real correlation between use and support.
What has built our use/approval rating is a combination of factors:
- Service first -- a strong customer orientation among our staff
- Focused and professional PR effort
- A comprehensive marketing approach, based on regular surveys, focus groups, demographic analysis, the merchandising of our collections, and GIS analysis of market share (80% of our households have at least one active library card, we regularly see circ gains of 18-33% per year, for over 5 years now)
- Outreach services that work hard to find the people who don't find us
- A literacy-based focus to our children's services (coupled with lots of weekly story times)
But we don't seem to have quite figured out how to translate that use and support into a willingness among the majority of our patrons to dig into their pockets and shell out actual cash, despite our long spells between such requests (12 years since our last increase) and the modest amounts we ask for.
What to do? Deeper analysis, I guess. Some experiments in PR that work on messages that are more about the value of our services, and not just calls to dig in and use them. I'm also wondering what two other key demographics might have to say about the situation in our county: we are overwhelmingly Republican and dominated by Boomers and Gen-Xers. Are our results reflective of a political bias, a generational conservatism, or a sign of the economy (although Douglas County has, thus far, escaped the worst of the results reported elsewhere)?
But the OCLC report says demographics don't matter, either. Attitudes matter.
How do we effect a culture change in our community, an attitudinal shift? Right now here's the honest answer: I don't know. But I intend to figure it out.
Jeff Horrell
Reviewing our recent satisfaction surveys, specifically related to students, we have ranked in the mid-90 percent range. These percentages have been consistent for a number of years.
Why? There are most likely many different reasons, but I believe it is a combination of providing an appropriate array of resources and connections made with our staff electronically or in person in our library spaces. Also, students comment favorably about the library environment of which we have a number of "micro environments" depending on a student's need or mood at the time.
An area where we know students are not satisfied is our opening hours. Despite having several 24-hour spaces and the main library complex open until 2:00 AM five days a week during term, students consistently ask about longer hours. We are looking into additional 24-hour spaces, but we've been reluctant to remain completely open 24/7.
We have participated in LibQUAL+ in 2004 and in 2008 which reaches the broadest community of users. The most recent data has not been fully analyzed, but it is generally positive. But I suspect if we talked with individuals in a focus group situation we would learn of concerns or needs ranging from longer hours to stronger specific information or collections needs.
I have, along with our Associate Librarian for Information Resources, been visiting academic departments as part of their departmental meetings, to learn about concerns as well as give an overview of issues the library is working on. These face-to-face discussions are extremely interesting and valuable and actually quite enjoyable.
All in all, I think one of the most effective way of improving is simply listening to our users and acting on ideas or concerns they voice. We may not or cannot always do what users suggest, but there is always something we learn from the suggestions.
Bill Crowe
My best guess-–after 18 years at the University of Kansas—-is that the KU Libraries overall would get vaguely positive ratings, likely 60 percent positive from faculty and a bit higher (in the 70s) from students--with undergrads being on the higher end of the 70s and grad students closer to the faculty.
Overall, however, I would guess there would be more virtual shoulder-shrugging in response to any survey, even among those who respond positively, because the identity (branding?) of “the library” has become fuzzier and because so many other academic support offerings attract the attention/concern of the campus community.
Consider the context. Two or three decades ago we were not competing so much for attention with IT, but we also were not seen in the same family with campus-visible writing centers, centers for teaching excellence (KU lingo), consulting services for grant writing, career counseling services and the like. (I do not even begin to consider the effects of interest in other kinds of services, e.g., multi-million dollar recreation centers).
It is not that such entities/services did not exist, but that libraries were seen by the community as having a “higher,” all-embracing academic reach/responsibility. Key faculty and student leaders paid attention—-both to offer support and criticism. Faculty and student opinion leaders less often would have shrugged their shoulders about most “library issues,” seeing them as their issues.
There are still institutions where the library—-thanks often to innovative leaders in the library and beyond—-is still at the center of attention, but I sense (no evidence to offer!) that this is not nearly so common as in, say, 1975.
I am personally largely out of the game formally these days because I work part-time. I plan to retire next year (after 40 years as a librarian!), but I try to do my part to stay engaged in campus life. I have done this even to the point of accepting election to the University Senate with three other librarians [we are counted as faculty). Last year, I even accepted the role of president of the Senate, which kept me very, very busy on all sorts of issues.
The point is that if we—-the people who give a face to “the library”—-stay engaged on a broad front (not just on “our” issues) we have a chance of developing or keeping the library’s most valued asset: having our clientele see that we—-as individuals and as keepers of the library mission—-identify with them and their needs, as a matter of course. If we earn that trust, we can have a chance to listen and explain and to offer help in the most natural of settings across the institution. Doing this work (which I still enjoy), will help us adapt and change, to keep developing innovations in services that can sustain the value of the library brand (I do cringe a bit at that word).
Loriene Roy
- Roy isn't a library director and considers this question with regard to her own institution.
In this case I think first of our iSchool and how it's perceived by its customers. Customers of LIS programs include the students, alums, employers, host institution, and field at large.
I think it's the nature of many in our field to be critical and to complain clearly and often. In many ways, this is a symptom of their caring and certainly is an advantage over apathy.
The same feelings are often expressed when we speak about LIS programs. Current students quickly realize that they have one or two years of academic preparation to prepare for a career in what is often a new field. Some faculty advise then to explore broadly. Others ask them to focus and declare a track or area of interest. Potential employers expect them to be ready on day one to perform as experienced information professionals. Their preparation is a balance of learning the philosophical groundings of the field while acquiring workplace attributes that will help them continue to adjust to a changing job market and be prepared for change.
The most common approval rating for LIS programs is the US News & World Reports ranking, based on surveying selected LIS faculty who are asked not to rate their own programs or those where they studied. These rankings are both welcomed and criticized. Regardless, highly ranked programs--or those who increased their rankings--celebrate this news.
I can hazard to guess what the approval rating might be for our iSchool program: a strong 90 percent. I base this estimate on several factors:
- Volume of inquiries from prospective students. Our admissions process accepts only one out of every three to five applicants.
- Rate of completion. Nearly all students complete the program.
- Rate of placement. More than 90% of graduates are placed within a few months of graduation.
- High rankings of our program by our peers.
To many, the simple answer to improving rankings is increased funding--for student support, for faculty recruiting and retention, for research support and for participation on professional engagement. In some ways we need to woo back our practitioner/alumni community by proving that we can continue to prepare outstanding graduates--and contribute to their local institutions and local/state/national professional associations. Schools of information still need to demonstrate commitment to librarianship.
George Needham
- Needham also looks at the non-library he's part of--in this case, OCLC.
Over the last few years, I've done several programs titled "To See Ourselves as Others See Us," about how librarians and civilians (Joan Frye Williams' term for anyone without a library background) perceive libraries very differently. I stole the title of my presentation from the famous Robert Burns poem, "To a Louse." The whole poem reads:
- Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
The question this month is a wonderful chance to apply that same lens to my employer. OCLC has a presence in about 112 countries, and how a library worker perceives OCLC depends a lot on where that person happens to be working. Here in North America, when librarians think about OCLC, they likely think first about cataloging and resource sharing, the components of WorldCat. If you happen to be in a library, say, in Germany, you might think of OCLC as the provider of your online catalog system, because OCLC Europe, the Middle East and Africa sells several of the major ILS products available on the Continent. If you're working in Asia, you might see OCLC as the provider of your English language e-content, since NetLibrary is our biggest single product in the Asia Pacific region.
What this has meant is that we have had to retool the way we're governed. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was fairly easy to base OCLC membership on how many records the libraries within any region added to WorldCat. The more records that came in from any one area, the more delegates that area (be it a network like PALINET or an OCLC Service Center like OCLC Asia Pacific) received on Users Council.
As we moved into other services, such as FirstSearch, CONTENTdm, NetLibrary, and local systems, the older basis of allocating votes in governance became less representative and we searched for new ways to manage this diversity of member options. As a result, OCLC is implementing a new, more decentralized form of governance for the cooperative. It's not an easy or intuitive process, and it requires a lot of hard thinking about what membership means in this new world.
In this way, OCLC's struggle with governance reflects the changes that libraries have had to make in rethinking how they hear the voices of their members, what they offer and how they present their offering to the world. This is a healthy exercise, one that needs to be done often and without nostalgia, but with a clear idea of the world as it stands today and a comprehensive vision of what it should be tomorrow.
Related articles
- Naming them--patrons, users or members? - Who are those people who use and support your library? The October 2008 PLN Challenge.
- From awareness to funding - Two sets of notes on the OCLC report.
- Does success justify funding? - Jamie LaRue considers issues raised by the OCLC report and the situation in Douglas County.
- Telling the library story - The March 2008 LLN Peer Panel
- The storied library - One way of approaching the library story
