Acting on your feedback from the Library Survey

We asked our students to complete the Library Survey in November 2022. Since our previous update about the results we’ve been busy working through the numerous open comments and have now come up with an action plan for how we’ll respond. Before we cover the actions, here’s a reminder of the key findings from the survey:

We asked you to tell us the three words which you felt best describe the University Library and we were pleased to report that the vast majority of the words were positive.

Here were your top 10 most frequently used words to describe the Library (starting with the most frequent):

1. Useful
2. Quiet
3. Helpful
4. Busy
5. Spacious
6. Resourceful
7. Organised
8. Comfortable
9. Calm
10. Clean

We also asked you to rate your satisfaction with the Library across a range of services, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. The average satisfaction levels for each service were as follows:

Our action plan

From our analysis of the survey results we have come up with five key areas which we’ll explore in more detail. Read on for more detail on what we’re planning.

Action 1: Conduct a space audit of the Library buildings

We know that the Library can get very busy at peak time of the year and you were very clear about this in your feedback. Sadly there are very few quick wins when it comes to adding more study space in an already very busy building. However, we would like to identify ways in which we can expand and improve our study space provision, feeding into a long term vision for the maintenance and refurbishment of the Library. We don’t have a timescale for this work as yet, but we’ll provide further updates when we know more.

Action 2: Consider the brand for academic skills support

The Library provides a lot of academic skills support, both within and outside your degree programmes. It was evident from the survey, however, that you’re not always aware of this support or that you were unclear how it relates to the Library. To make it as easy as possible for you to get the help you need, we will work on coordinating and communicating our full skills offer more clearly and consistently.

Action 3: Enhance communication about 24 hour study space provision

The survey highlighted a problem relating to 24 hour study space: you were unclear about the Library opening 24/7 during exam periods and were not always aware of other 24/7 study spaces around campus (including those managed by the Library). To help with this, we’ll increase our communication around these spaces.

Action 4: Promote the LibKey Nomad browser extension

You told us that you welcome access to electronic resources, but that you sometimes find them difficult to access. One option to help with this is the LibKey Nomad browser extension, which checks the availability of journal articles when you’re browsing a journal website. You then get a direct link to the article from our subscriptions, making it much quicker and easier to find what you need. We know that many students are not aware of this option, so we’ll do more to publicise LibKey Nomad in the coming months.

Action 5: Develop a leisure reading collection

There were numerous comments in the survey (and elsewhere for that matter) about the Library adding more books for leisure reading. We have an extensive range of fiction already, but you’ve told us that this is often quite difficult to find if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for or if you want to browse. We’re planning to add a separate collection of contemporary fiction and we’ll share more details soon about this. We’ll also explore how we can make it easier to find the fiction, poetry and other literature in our main collections.

Next steps

We will now start working on our action plan from the survey and will provide updates in the next academic year about how we’re getting on. Thank you again to everyone who completed the survey; your feedback means we can transform our services in the right way to suit your needs.