How can we improve the familiarity and credibility between Library experts, resources and services we offer and the students, faculty and staff who use them? Whether we’re building new relationships or reconnecting with patrons/colleagues during assessment or user research activities, we have the opportunity to use certain marketing and communication best practices and tools during our user research to align clear and targeted communication with our key audiences.
Assessing library impact on student learning is essential for demonstrating libraries’ integrated value and commitment to higher education. In 2018 the author investigated faculty perceptions of student learning in library instruction sessions, and as a result, revealed that faculty observe enhanced learning when their students participate in library instruction opportunities.
The first post ("Personas: A Classic User Experience Design Technique") in this 2-part series described what personas are and, generally, how to create them. I closed with some cautions about ways personas might come out less than helpful – creating flat, overloaded, or fake (unresearched) personas. The second post presents our persona development for a specific website project.
Document Delivery provides traditional Interlibrary Loan Borrowing service, and scanning and delivery service for books and articles from material owned by the U-M Library. As a result of a successful pilot to provide free Local Document Delivery for faculty and graduate students, the department next sought to change the fee-based service for undergraduate students and staff. Departmental managers wondered: What would happen if we made scanning and delivery service free for these patron groups?
Personas are employed in user experience design work to help design teams create or improve systems, spaces, and services with targeted populations in mind. Libraries use personas as archetypes to maximize effective library user experiences. This is the first of two posts about the creation and use of personas in the U-M Library.
When developing or reconsidering a library service, sometimes you can get stuck in your head. You go back and forth with your colleagues proposing different ways of doing things. You model out different scenarios, do an environmental scan, read the literature, weigh pros and cons but you still can’t decide how to proceed. A great way to figure out how to move forward is to go to your users for feedback by employing intercept interviews.
Ask a Librarian email and instant messaging (IM) service providers targeted current users of our virtual reference services during 2016-2017, to gather feedback about our online research and reference service. We wanted to know more about users' motivation for seeking help via email and via IM, as well as users' satisfaction with their online interactions. Additionally, we were interested in gathering users' ideas for future IM service enhancements.
