September 10, 2014, 4:04 pm By Brian Mathews The Ubiquitous Librarian
The mission of our Library Student
Advisory Board is to help us gain a better understanding of the student
experience at our university. We talk about a lot of different ideas and
issues. I want to share three that surprised me.
Photocopying? We were talking
about printing and I asked the students if they ever photocopied (we have
all-in-one machines that do printing, copying, and scanning) and the students
were silent. After some strange looks someone finally asked what’s a
photocopy?
Apparently everything is a print these
days. Reproduction of a page of paper doesn’t seem to be a very common
activity. I explained what it was and felt like I was describing a telegraph. I
guess with journals migrating to predominately digital formats that most undergrads
do not need to photocopy articles. Most of their own content is digital as well
— so there is no copying notes, forms, or anything like that. Next time I might
tour them around the microfilm and VCRs.
Note: the grad students knew about
photocopying
Reservable study space? No thanks. Last semester I
asked them about offering a few desks or study carrels that students could
reserve. Instead of hunting around for a quiet place to read, what if you could
schedule it? The group was unanimously opposed. They felt this was fine for
group spaces because people needed to assemble at an appointed time, but they
didn’t want to see this for individuals. They preferred the
first-come-first-serve approach and said that it is hard to predict in advance
exactly when you might study; the logistics involved didn’t seem worthwhile.
Share my data, please. Another theme
we discussed was personal data. Students said it would be helpful to have a
simple dashboard where they could see how busy the library is at a given time.
They were not particularly interested in desktop computer availability (which
is easy to provide) but more focused on the inventory of quiet area seating and
group tables. An engineer in the group started mapping out how we could do this
with sensors but with 1,000+ seats that could be challenging.
The suggestion that received the most
traction was requiring students to swipe their ID cards when they accessed the
building. They do this now at the gym, residential halls, and various computer
labs: it’s not usual. I brought up the concept of privacy but that didn’t
resonate with them. The consensus was that if the data could be compiled and
shared in a meaningful way (generally displaying the busyness of the building)
that it would be valuable to them.
Secondly, they thought it might be useful
for the library and other campus planners to gather accurate demographics: how
many first-year students are using the library, how many engineering students,
how long people tended to stay in the library, etc. We talked a bit about the
value of these analytics— they brought this up, not me.
The eye-opener
for me was how surprised they were that we were not already collecting this
information. We do require students to swipe their ID after midnight, but they
were advocating for something more. It’s always interesting to see things
through the ever-changing eyes of the user.
