Libraries Assessment: Libraries/Ithaka S+R Faculty & Graduate Student Surveys Project

Faculty/Graduate Student Surveys Project: Key points

• Both surveys will launch April 19, 2022 and be open for 4 weeks
• Current faculty and graduate students will receive an introduction email and a link to the survey
• Surveys take approximately 15 to 30 minutes
• Participation is voluntary and anonymous
• Results in the form of generalized analysis will be shared widely 
• No personally identifiable information will be collected
• Survey research project was approved for exempt status by the IRB (STUDY00000437)
• Funding for the graduate student survey is provided by the Division of Graduate Studies

Why is UO Libraries launching this project now?

The aim of this survey project is to understand, in this new era of hybrid teaching, research, and learning, how faculty and graduate students access library resources, use library spaces, conduct disciplinary research, engage in teaching practices, and perceive UO Libraries services, collections, and facilities.    

The Libraries has not participated in implementing a large-scale online survey to gather feedback from students and faculty since 2018. Since then, the pandemic has changed teaching and research practices.  Now, there is more remote teaching, online learning, and use of online platforms to collaborate and communicate.   Students are in greater need of online tools, access to librarians online and maybe less in need of physical library spaces than prior to COVID-19.  To better understand the needs of graduate students and faculty today, the Libraries will implement an online survey to both groups in spring term 2022. Survey data will provide evidence of how faculty and graduate students practice teaching, conduct research in their discipline, and perceive the role of the libraries.   As a learning organization, it is essential the libraries continuously use tools such as surveys to stay current with the needs of these two important patron groups.    

Through examination of faculty and graduate student survey response data, UO Libraries will be able to:  

• develop new services and modify existing ones based on responses about teaching and research practices;  
• improve outreach and communication to both faculty and graduate student populations; 
• improve access to library resource discovery systems; 
• create collaborative initiatives to further expand the Libraries capacity to support open; educational resources, digital scholarship, and information literacy instruction; 
• develop better methods to collaborate with faculty in scholarship and teaching; and 
• engage faculty and graduate students in conversations about the future of digital scholarship and digital preservation initiatives in research libraries.   

To implement this survey, the Libraries will be partnering with Ithaka S+R, a well-known and respected consulting firm which works with research libraries to improve services, collections, and spaces through survey research.  We will purchase both their local faculty survey and graduate/professional student survey to implement in the spring term.   Ithaka S+R has fielded the local faculty survey triennially since the year 2000 and this is aligned with a national survey most recently conducted in 2021.  We will be able to compare our faculty response data with our peer research libraries across the country.