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12th ALIA National Library Technicians Conference
TAFE portals - how useful are they?Michelle Alcock, librarian, Queensland Medical Laboratory, Jan Galloway and Monica Morris, Brisbane and Northpoint Institute of TAFEAbstractWith the exponential growth in computer technologies libraries around the world have been scrambling to keep up to date with advances in technology that will offer the best in customer service to our clients. Over the last 15 years library budgets have not reflected the growth in publishing or equipment costs. Academic institutions like TAFE have followed the University libraries lead and augmented their physical library services with electronic portals to OPACs and electronic databases, in order to reach more students and extend library services to those previously unable to visit the library. How do these electronic portals in TAFE libraries increase customer service - are they meeting or exceeding customer expectations and are the customers satisfied with accessing information electronically and the results they obtain from them? This paper will be based on the results of a survey to be conducted in first semester 2003 regarding customer service in the online environment. A regional (Townsville) and an urban TAFE institute (Brisbane and North Point) will be involved. Both on-campus and off-campus students will be surveyed. The survey will reveal if and how students use the services offered online by the library and will measure satisfaction levels with the service. It is expected that suggestions from the students combined with current practice in the library literature will lead the authors to suggest strategies to improve customer service in the online environment. IntroductionWe started our research asking whether TAFE's customers were accessing information through the library's portals or gateways and if they were satisfied with the results they found. We planned to test Brisbane North Institute of TAFE and the Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE in Townsville. Due to delays in the implementation of computer labs in the Pimlico and City campuses in Townsville we were unable to include the Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE in our study. On 1st July 2002, the TAFE institutes of Brisbane and North Point merged. This resulted in 8 campuses, each with a library and belonging to the new Brisbane North Institute of TAFE. The first twelve months after the merger was devoted to moulding the staff into one as it was a bit of 'us' and 'them' at the start. Despite using the same integrated library system, each institute had developed their own way of doing things. Teams, consisting of staff members from both institutes, gradually formulated new processes and practices. This had to be accomplished while still operating and offering our usual high standard of customer service. Getting staff together for meetings is not always easy as the libraries are scattered between Brisbane City CBD and Caboolture. One campus library operates in joint partnership with the Queensland University of Technology and the Caboolture Shire Council and requires special arrangements, for example, Dewey Decimal Classification system is used to fit in with its partner libraries while the rest of us use the Library of Congress system. Now that most processes are in place and staff have settled into the new institute structure, we thought it would be beneficial to evaluate certain aspects of the library to ascertain if we are meeting our library's objectives. Being an academic library, the main objective is to support the courses taught at our institute. To do this we endeavour to assist students in accessing appropriate resources. In order to deliver relevant services, we need to know more about the preferences and needs of our students, that is, we need to know about our user community, their information needs and behaviour in relation to existing resources and services. Do they want and use the electronic information and services being provided? This study analyses students' usage patterns and their perceptions that may be quite different from those the library staff make. The results are used to reveal opportunities to effect change according to student needs. In past satisfaction surveys, students have consistently rated face-to- face library staff service as high. We want this to include the services we offer electronically. Prior to the merger, each Institute library had their own website. Post merger, the Brisbane North website has only been up and running since February and is still evolving. We do have some restrictions regarding the site as it must follow the design principles of the Institute website. Some of the features include access to our catalogue, a catalogue tutorial, online forms for asking a reference question or requesting an item, subject web links, databases, links to other library catalogues, search engines and free e-mails. More details can be viewed at www.bp.tafe.net/library Portal terminology has become very generic and abused and the word portal means different things to different people. The portal concept and technology is rapidly emerging and changing and for some is still in a state of flux. It is difficult to determine if a portal is defined by design or the range of functions and services being offered. Authors of a 2002 survey of American Research Libraries, Karen Wetzel and Mary Jackson state that libraries use the term 'portal' because people feel they have to claim 'portal status'.... If you don't have it, maybe it becomes 'Portal Envy.'' They go on to say it is difficult to determine the point at which a Web site evolves into a portal. Debbie Campbell from The National Library of Australia defines a portal as seamlessly integrating existing services to provide an amalgamated personalized service that provides access to print-based and electronic systems. Using this definition, I guess we have portal envy but we have only been live for six months. A questionnaire was developed that would collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The aim was to keep it as simple and as short as possible so students would be more inclined to complete it but also to ensure it not be that lightweight that collected data would be useless. One of the most extensive questionnaires about information needs ever conducted was part of an Investigation of the Information Requirements of Social Sciences. Over a thousand individuals filled out questionnaires consisting of nearly a hundred pages in length. I doubt if we would have even received one response if we had tried to emulate that. Our questionnaire was 2 pages and we thought that was sufficient. We hoped the qualitative data would offer further understanding of the quantitative data and reveal factors that influenced student attitudes and behaviour. Most questions had an 'other' option to allow respondents to write their own answers and not be restricted to selecting a supplied answer. We wanted to discover what our students thought of our website, how frequently they used it and what they used the most. We wanted to find out why non-users were non- users. We also wanted to know if other factors such as gender, age, type of course studied made any impact on usage. If students predominantly used computers located in the library, did they still make use of our website or was it accessed more at home or work? A big question we wanted answered was did participation in a library training session make any difference to usage. We also wanted to celebrate any successes. We have over 20 000 students and decided one thousand questionnaires would be an adequate number, remembering that all data had to be transposed to a spreadsheet for analysis. We had a 50 per cent response rate. We accomplished this by involving the teachers. They asked the students to fill out the questionnaires during class time. This also helped obtain responses from non-library users. Teachers were selected on the basis of cooperation and what type of course their students were undertaking. A range of different course are taught at TAFE and we wanted a good mix to be represented, for example, diploma, certificate, apprenticeship block training and prevocational in subjects ranging from information technology, business and justice to hospitality, tourism, various trades and horticulture to name a few. Entering data from 500 respondents took care of quite a few nights. One of our librarians, Pat McKay, is a wiz with databases and we coerced her into creating one for us to use. Once all the information had been entered, she was further coerced into transferring this information to a spreadsheet. A big thank you goes to Pat. It was done this way as the information could be entered on one screen using the database whereas the spreadsheet would have required endless scrolling due to the large amount of data. Various charts have been used to illustrate our analysis of the data. We found out that:36 per cent of the students surveyed have never used the library website. Almost all the students use a computer at home and that the internet is the resource mostly used for assignments, followed by books and handouts prepared by the teacher. Database usage is very low - fewer than 10per cent of students used them regularly. Statistics from the vendor of the databases for the last six months show an average of 175 users per month with an average of 437 searches and only 96 downloads. These statistics indicate a need for a greater awareness of the value of databases and more training in how to search them effectively. The 64 per cent of surveyed students who have used the website rated the various features and their design favourably. Of the students who had never accessed the website 32per cent said this was because they didn't know it existed and 22per cent said they would use it if they had training. The rest said they could see no value in it. One of the reasons the library developed a website was to cater for external students information needs. We were disappointed to find that few of the external students were using the website and the resources available through it. Most said they didn't know it existed. After compiling all the questionnaires it became apparent that particular classes had attended library tours, had advanced database searching training and used the library catalogue and the internet for resources for assignments. These classes had significantly more students that used the library website and resources than classes that had not had library training. Teachers who valued the library's resources and ensured their students received adequate training to access them, taught these classes. We need to target the teachers who do not value the library's contribution to their students learning. We also need to increase the visibility of the library website to external students. We found that the students who have used the Brisbane North library website have been satisfied with their experience and the results they have got from accessing information electronically. More training targeted at specific areas is needed and more marketing to increase the profile of the library website with students and teachers. Recommendations
BibliographyBiographiesMichelle, Jan and Monica returned to work and study after raising a family. They gained their Associate Diploma in Applied Science (Library Technology) at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. Being external students, they met each other outside various exam rooms. Jan began work at the now closed Kedron Park Campus of QUT in Brisbane where she remained from 1992 to 1995. From there she went to her present position at Brisbane and North Point Institute of TAFE library. Jan has since completed a Bachelor of Science (Library Technology) being awarded the Compu-Stor academic award along the way from Edith Cowan University. She will finish her second degree, Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Science) from Charles Sturt University at the end of 2003. Michelle Alcock worked at the Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE in Townsville throughout her first degree. A move to Brisbane meant a change in jobs. Michelle is now an OPL at the Queensland Medical Laboratory. Still studying, Michelle has gained her Bachelor of Science (Library Technology) and will complete a Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Science) at the end of 2003. Michelle was the recipient of the ALIA award for Queensland library technician of the Year (Recent Graduate) in 2001.
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