As a user experience librarian, I need to make sure that I am considering all the sources of information that will help me better understand our students and faculty as library users. I want as much as possible to make keep in mind the mantra that “the user is not me.”
As an exercise in making a list of the main ways that I can learn about our users in the college library where I work, I put together this little mindmap that delineates between those sources where we are actively soliciting responses from our users and those sources where were are sifting through the traces of the users’ interactions with our services and systems. Did I miss anything important?
How about Google Analytics or other means of examining website usage? You may be able to get usage information about computers in the library–how many users, or how much time computers are logged in. Page counts for printers and copiers.
And something that I have just realized is that the office of institutional research conducts surveys and other studies that actively solicit comments from our college community which sometimes address library issues directly or obliquely. But we don’t always know about these things unless we ask.
D’oh! Of course, website analytics! I hadn’t thought about how students use the computers and when; that makes a ton of sense. Measuring printer and copier use is clever, too, as that is suggestive of student use (or non-use) of handheld devices for reading of articles and ebooks. And you’re right to spotlight surveys, as there are the ones the library may do from time to time, but there are larger surveys of graduating students about perceptions of all campus services that hold all sorts of interesting insights. Time to get back to work on my chart!