In March of 2022, a survey was released to about 700 students, posing questions on library improvements. This was the MISO survey.
“The MISO Survey provides robust, actionable, comparable results that participating institutions can use to inform strategic decisions and ongoing service improvement,”misosurvey.org states.
Information Services and Assessment Librarian Shawn Denny believes that more participation from students in completing a survey will help in the execution of bettering the library's services.
Out of the 700 students to whom the survey was sent, 280 sent a response. This calculates to 40% of students responding.
The survey asked questions such as which library services were the most satisfying and the least satisfying, as well as how well the current services are contributing to students’ academic goals.
“The number one important one was physical comfort in the library, so the seating and the lighting were really important to students at about 87% responding as that was either important or very important,” Denny said.
While students expressed that they used the library for a quiet workspace and were satisfied with the library’s abilities to provide that for them, some of the things that students were dissatisfied with were the collections of physical books within the library.
Many students expressed interest in a broader range of fiction books. This is something that was addressed by the addition of more fiction books in the Mcnaughten Collection this year.
“But either way we have a certain number of books that we can get that are contemporary and new fiction or new nonfiction,” Denny said. “So more relevant, current things, and it means that we can get them without having to say, okay, well we bought this hoping people would use it. We can essentially borrow it and then if it gets used, we could keep it for the future.”
While the MISO survey was in circulation, there was also another survey for the library focused on the study rooms specifically. Something that was a surprising interest expressed by students was the want of plants in the study rooms.
In the separate survey they had students enter a study room with different arrangements, and one thing that was received well was the implementation of plants. In the MISO survey, many students expressed this same interest in plants.
“One of the things they were testing was plants, and we got lots of responses on here that were like, add plants to the library! So that kind of impacted things,” Denny said.
Some other new additions in the library this year include the quiet study pods, which is a response to students' desire for quiet workspaces. Additionally, more whiteboards were added in the study rooms to replace the previous chalkboards.
The library and its staff were characterized by surveyors as being friendly, knowledgeable, reliable and responsive. An overall library service satisfaction rating reflected a satisfaction rate of over 98%.
“The library faculty and staff’s desire (is) to continually improve our service to students, faculty and staff at Taylor University,” Denny said.
More information on the MISO survey can be found at https://www.misosurvey.org/home.
