Week 3: Researching 18-20 year age group

That week was a tough one on me. After getting instructor feedback, I had to consider 2 things: 1) Is the library not getting enough feedback from their users as they would like to? Or 2) Are users having difficulty in providing feedback? (Assuming that users do want to provide feedback). So the first librarian I went to talk to was at my jolly local branch.

Sept 11
Kensington branch @ around 4:45-5:05pm:
Talked to the manager of Kensington branch, Yukiko Tosa. She's super nice (then again, so are all librarians). She's been working for the VPL for 30 years at least. When I asked whether or not the library was getting enough feedback from users, she told me that the library was indeed getting a good amount of feedback. Hmm, that contradicted with a few of the librarians I talked to. The library has specialists that do research on the needs of a community and they do surveys and programs to find out info. Even the Suggested Purchase form, she said, was getting enough hits at 40-80 per month. For a popular title, that is. Usually requests for more Dvd's than books. She did mention that some feedback would be nice regarding Kensington's relocation to a bigger building. I asked if there may be a specific demograph that the library hears the least feedback from. She said I could look into the 18-20somethings age group b/c they don't frequent the library as much. The library has programs for teens, kids, seniors, etc but not for 18-20somethings. That age group has gradutaed from high schooland are so busy with college life that there isn't enough feedback. Also they're relying on their school libraries, so their is a "competition" issue. Not until they get married and have kids, then they come back to the library just to introduce their children to reading. Yukiko was interested in knowing what college kids use the library for (studying? internet?).

Mount Pleasant branch @ around 7:50-8pm:
Revisted D'Arcy and told him about what Yukiko told me. When I asked for his opinion, he seemed unsure. I guess the 18-20somethings is not something he would know about. He told me that there are teen librarians who visit the Broadway Youth Centre to talk to teens there and get their input. A matter of knowing what the library could do to improve their services for those who don't use the library. I asked him who else I could talk to. He gave me the contact info of Annette, manager of teens and children's services.

Sept 12
Central branch @ around 2:30-2:51pm:
Popped into the children's department to see Annette, but she wasn't working that day. Instead, I got Randy who is a children's + teen's librarian. Again, I couldn't get much info from him because he was fairly new at working in the library. He told me teens and young adults don't use the library as much as kids and older adults do. Even then, they tend to lean towards internet than books. In general, the library is always looking for feedback from everyone. He showed me some possible online resources I could check out, like the article databases:

Library Literature and Information Science

Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts
Sorry, when you click on the links, you'll have to login, guys. It is a database of library articles, much like what ECUAD has. Anyway, Randy said I should check back on Monday to see Annette. I left him my contact info to give to Annette.

Sept 15
Central branch @ 4:30-5pm:
Phoning Annette didn't work. Only got her answering machine. Visited Central after school and found out Annette was not in, either. Was told she was a busy woman, running to meetings here and there. Saw Randy and again I left him my contact into for Annette. The lady at the children's library desk was helpful and tried to search through her contact of staff members. She phone the Marketing department and gave me the email address of the manager of the marketing department, Jean Kavanagh.

Sept 16
I emailed Jean the following day:

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008, cindywong@eciad.ca wrote:

Hello!

Yesterday I talked with some of the children's librarians at Central Library for my school research project. They directed me to you for my questions. I am an design student at Emily Carr University. I would like to design a communication stategy for the library in order to get feedback from its users (eg. survey template, etc).

I spoke with Yukiko at the Kensington branch and she tells me that the population demograph that all libraries least hear from are the young adults. I would like to know if that is true or whether or not the VPL feels they are not getting enough user feedback from young adult patrons. Also, whether such feedback is a priority for the library. If possible, are there any statistics or data I can look into? Thank you for your time!

Sept 17
Jean replied back with this email:

Thank you for your interest in the library. I take it that your strategy is an assignment and not something you would be presenting to the library to circulate?

Regarding Yukiko's comments, I am sure they are accurate as they are likely based on her experience and professional activities that she participates in. I cannot really comment about whether we receive sufficient feedback. We act upon the feedback we receive if necessary and we try a number of ways to reach young adults for programs they might be interested in through mediums like Facebook and Twitter etc. I don't know if we have statistics that particularly look at the demographic you are interested in, but if what you want to know is how many young people use the library I can see if we have any information. The Library does not issue surveys regularly.

I also got an email back from Randy the same day. He said the library cannot release statistics on youth library usage, but provided some resources that I could check out:

"Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts" and "Library Literature and
Information Science" article databases. http://www.vpl.ca/electronic_databases/cat/C778
Canadian Library Association: www.cla.ca
Canadian Urban Libraries Council: www.culc.ca
American Library Association: www.ala.ca
ALA's subgroup for youth services: http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/yalsa.cfm
A report on youth library usage in the USA: http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/HarrisYouthPoll.pdf

I went to Central after class that day and saw Jean for a minute. She was busy but sent me an email the next day. Like Randy, she said the library doesn't release statistics but I could go to the professors in School of Library and Archival Studies at UBC. She had a note from the VPL director responsible for statistics:

We do not require that people provide year of birth when registering for a card so we have no way of identifying who is in that age group. The student would have to hold focus groups to get at that answer. We haven't done any targeted young adult work in this area.