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User Satisfaction, Marketing and Outreach... What’s It All About?
Q: How do you measure user satisfaction?
We began some more hardcore assessment this year through LibQUAL+ to measure user satisfaction. We’re going to repeat it this year, along with other methods of interaction and assessment, some at the point of service, and some in liaison groups, hopefully capturing outcome assessment, as well. It was attractive to my director because it gives us good profiles, but just like in a focus group, a survey can give you an idea of how uninformed your customer base is: we’ve extended hours, added a new collection, but the comments requesting the same are still there. We know we need to continually inform our customers, and measuring satisfaction is an indicator of where to place our efforts.
Q: What is your biggest challenge in supporting your users?
Teaching them about what’s new, and what’s already there, and how to use it well. Faculty that became tenured before 1996 also can struggle with this, as they’ve had little formal training on using online information resources, unlike librarians. Students, having grown up in a largely electronic environment, already think they’ve mastered it. If people are asking for more journals but we have nearly 7,000, it must be that they aren’t looking in the right place for them and so aren’t aware of how rich our environment is.
Teaching them that they need to stay connected to a person in the library so that they use the tools in a smart way. Road shows, new staff programs, a student liaison group allow us to talk with people so we can become part of their landscape and reach them on a personal level. We need to help them put together a new set of research skills that isn’t what they taught themselves. The message is that the searching skills you learn here, the basic strategies, will serve you well after CWRU, too. If I could do more in marketing and outreach I would be very happy. It’s not a case that “if you build it they will come.” The digital world has few boundaries... but its very size and lack of help can make it less efficient. We can tell users “Librarian X is the one who can show you the best way to do that...” or “I can put you in touch with Librarian X to get you started”, rather than “go to the library and look up...” It’s all about connecting with users and showing them what’s possible, how it works, what the benefit is. With undergrads the benefit is: It saves you time. A librarian can save you time, good for your social life.
Q: How do you personally benefit when your users are happy?
You want to feel you’ve made a difference for them. You want to unlock the mysteries. You want them to be jazzed. Librarians are teachers. Not everything is quantifiable in customer service. As an administrative liaison the praise I get comes from unusual places, but it always feels personal, and like a partnership. Whether it’s a new service that you can measure, or an interaction that is a ‘soft’ result, when you meet-and-exceed, you’ve truly made a difference. 
Contributed by Harriet Bell, Senior Marketing Manager, ScienceDirect, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Seasons come and seasons go, and so do journal catalogs. Elsevier and other publishers update their price lists and publish them in catalog form each summer. This year is no different and Elsevier expects to make its 2004 catalog available over its corporate Web site ( www.elsevier.com) this August. Like the ‘03 catalog, the ‘04 version will be in PDF format and will include ISSNs, titles, and pricing information.
What is new this year is that there will also be a downloadable comma-delimited file. This should enable librarians to load the file into their own spreadsheet applications and facilitate management of their collections and budgets. Look for the catalog at
www.elsevier.com.
