Undergraduate in focus: can student input lead to new directions in planning undergraduate library services? - The Library and Undergraduate Education

INTRODUCTION

Strategic planning in universities often involves many complex activities: consultant-led brainstorming sessions, retreats, meetings with staff participation at all levels, the use of bubble-up techniques, and even staff focus groups. Often faculty are included in at least some portion of the planning. What is less common, even rare, is the effort to gain information from students--the actual customers or stakeholders in what the university has to offer.

What are the reasons for this lack of input by the very consumers of the educational product we provide? There may be a risk in finding out this information--is this why libraries so rarely ask? The most skeptical may think that users only want a quiet place to study which is open twenty-four hours a day, with reserve readings readily available, plentiful photocopiers that always work, and no-cost printers attached to the online catalogs. The more optimistic may think we need to provide even more classes on using information resources or more accurate and timely serials holding data.

Some may argue that this information is unnecessary because we as educators, professors, and librarians know what the customer needs. Library staff struggle to keep reference desks open for students. For their sake we write bibliographic guides and pathfinders and offer wonderful courses in using electronic information sources which we know they will need to pursue their academic programs, but we rarely know from students--our primary users--what they think of us or the services we provide for them.

Quite coincidentally, at two campuses of the University of California (Berkeley and Los Angeles), the libraries undertook focus group interviews of undergraduates (Berkeley also surveyed graduate students and faculty) in Spring 1993 as part of a strategic planning process, to determine students' perception of the library and to understand better what undergraduates wanted the library to provide. For better or worse, both campus libraries very much wanted input from our often-overlooked consumers in planning for the 1990s and for the twenty-first century.

HISTORY OF FOCUS GROUPS

What exactly is a focus group?

a focus group can be defined as a carefully planned discussion designed

to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive,

nonthreatening environment. It is conducted with approximately

seven to ten people by a skilled interviewer. The discussion

is relaxed, comfortable, and often enjoyable for participants as they

share their ideas and perceptions. Group members influence others

by responding to ideas and comments in the discussion. (Krueger,

1988, p. 18)

Focus groups were originally used in the 1940s in the field of sociology (Hendershott & Wright, 1993, p. 154). They were soon picked up as a marketing tool in other fields and in the 1990s began being widely used as a tool of qualitative measurement in libraries (Baker, 1991; Widdows et al., 1991; Young, 1993).

Why use a focus group for this kind of information seeking? According to Krueger (1988, pp. 44-46), there are several positive reasons. First, focus groups bring people together in a social setting where their ideas can be shared by others. The setting is conducive to free and open discussion. Second, the moderator of such a group can pursue ideas that arise in the course of discussion--follow-up that could not possibly occur through the use of printed surveys. Third, the results of focus groups are framed in lay terminology making them easily understood by others. Fourth, for public institutions particularly, their low cost is appealing. The fifth advantage is that the results can be obtained quickly--an important feature for both UCLA and Berkeley library staff. Finally, through the use of focus groups, researchers can obtain a rather large sampling of qualitative data. All of these features make focus groups an attractive instrument to learn about the perceptions of undergraduate library users.

FOCUS GROUPS AT THE TWO INSTITUTIONS

Beginning in July of 1992, the library initiated an extensive strategic planning process in order to look ahead for a period of three to five years and envision what the library should be like at the end of that time. Working groups were established in the areas of automation, bibliographic access, collections, research services, library culture, and development and external relations as part of the process. A working group on undergraduate services was originally envisioned by the new university librarian. The group's charge was to include a redefinition of basic services to undergraduates, a discussion of the relationship of undergraduate services to academic programs, of the traditional role of Berkeley's Moffitt Undergraduate Library as the core of the library's undergraduate services, and of the role of networked services in undergraduate library programs. The working group on undergraduate services was also to have been charged with soliciting input from undergraduates and from faculty and campus administrators whose special concerns included undergraduate education. Not all of the working groups were ultimately constituted by the university librarian as originally envisioned, and the undergraduate services working group was one such task force.