[ILL-L] Survey problems

[Campbell, Heather]

In my previous life as a reference librarian, I was on a programming benchmarking team for our library.  We had a number of libraries respond initially to surveys given on three different library listservs but most of our benchmarking partner candidates were direct contacts.  We looked at public libraries with similar types of city government and similar populations. Once our city won the Governors Sterling Award, it was drilled into us that part of our responsibility is to answer other institution's surveys.  If the survey is about something we don't do in a public library setting, like document delivery and distance learning student services, I don't answer it.  Not all surveys specify what kind of library the surveyor is targeting, so if I think I can contribute some helpful information, I'll reply.  I'm pretty sympathetic because of my own experience getting questions answered.  I found that I needed to combine direct contacts' responses and listerv survey responses to get the information I needed.
 
Heather Campbell
Manager, Special Services (Interlibrary Loan & Books By Mail)
Jacksonville Public Library (JPL)
Jacksonville, FL 32202-3505
(904) 630-7017; VM: (904) 630-2986

________________________________

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of David Woolwine
Sent: Wed 11/21/2007 12:47 PM
To: ill-l at webjunction.org
Subject: [ILL-L] Survey problems



I am developing a survey to be sent to a very large number of ILL
librarians. My institution which initially worked with me to develop the
web survey now is bulking at sending it out. One individual in computing
services is afraid that if too many surveys are "rejected" that the
server at my institution would be marked as a spammer. I offered to send
out the surveys in small batches or even one by one manually and was
told this was not the problem, it was the possibility of a number of my
emails being "rejected".
This seems somewhat reasonable on the surface but two questions arose
for me. One, how many people "reject" a survey, i.e. mark it or report
it as spam rather than simply not opening it or ignorning it? Secondly,
what do other insitutions which perhaps have a longer history of
supporting faculty research do in such cases? Perhaps large scale web
surveys are new but is this a concern elsewhere and has a "work around"
been developed?

I know about SurveyMonkey but would rather not go that route, at least
not initially.

A related question is does anyone know how large the population of ILL
librarians are on this list-serve, and how many/what percentage of ILL
librairans/libraries in the US I would reach by simply posting a link to
the web survey here?

We continue to work on this at my institution but it is unresolved at
this point.

David Woolwine
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