The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 2/23/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Vlad Lodoaba Members of the LIS team work fastidiously to support the school's endeavors.

In a large-scale effort to assess the overall satisfaction with Library and Information Services (LIS), Middlebury College, along with four other schools including Bryn Mawr, the University of Richmond, Wellesley College and Bates College, created a detailed survey that was distributed during the fall of 2005. Associate Dean of LIS Carol Peddie was the primary architect of the survey at Middlebury, and the four other schools were part of the survey because, like Middlebury, they have combined library and technology services. When the new library was built, Library Services combined with Technology Services to establish LIS.

The survey went out to 700 randomly-selected students, 335 faculty members, and 825 staff members. While there was a 72.8 percent response rate among the faculty, only 48.5 percent of the staff and 35.4 percent of students responded.

"We created a survey instrument because it helped us assess what services are being used and how satisfied our users are with our services," Peddie said. Along with simply assessing the importance of LIS at Middlebury, the survey was designed "to see if Middlebury students are satisfied with LIS services, and to see how Middlebury services compare to those at other schools," she explained. She also added that although only five schools were a part of this first survey, "[it] is being rolled out to an additional 10-15 schools that have merged services. We hope to see trends, so if we are looking to enhance or let go of a service, we can look beyond just Middlebury."

Peddie hopes that the survey will be conducted every two years, so that the campus doesn't feel "over surveyed."

The officially-stated purpose of the survey was "to assess the use, importance, and satisfaction of LIS services and resources and to provide an initial benchmark measure." The results showed that the most frequently used services by faculty are library services - the library Web site, catalog, databases and circulation - classroom technology, access to online resources from off campus, Banner and the Helpdesk. The least-used services among faculty consisted of video conferencing, checking out laptops and the computing Web site. The survey ultimately concluded that 96 percent of those faculty members who responded were satisfied with the overall library service.

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