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Information Services Assessment Council Meeting Minutes


October 9, 2007

Present: Darrell McNamara, Kathy Moore, Bruce Oliver, Marianne Reed, Rhonda Sharp, Thelma Simons (chair), Rebecca Smith

Absent: Jennifer Church-Duran, Fran Devlin, Julie Fugett, Jill Glaser, Holly Mercer, Bill Myers, Ryan Papesh, James Tumlinson, Sherry Umscheid

Carryover topics from previous meetings:

  • Status of the pre and post assessment forms. They are not yet published on Web site. Myers is responsible for posting.
  • ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and IT. Simons reported that she, Myers and Papesh have reviewed and will share some ideas/suggestions with the Council.
  • "Meet the Customer" group. Reed reported that she, Mercer and Myers met to discuss possible formats, frequency and participants. Suggestions included distinguished professors, Kemper Award winners, grad students, administrative reps., etc. Perhaps three people per session, maybe in the Concept Review timeframe on a quarterly basis. Forward any other suggestions to Myers.

We discussed two assessment proposals. We began with the proposal Papesh submitted which overlaps with Moore's Staff Fellows project to evaluate the impact of the combined help desks (IT and former NTS). Moore would like to do a short assessment now and a follow-up one in the spring with focus on support, not service enhancements. Discussed benefits of survey versus focus group. Here are some of the discussion points:

  • Determine scope. Is this a survey of existing users or a "who uses, who doesn't" survey?
  • Determine what is already available. Remedy and the phone statistics can provide some information. What can be obtained from there and what else needs to be known.
  • Look at the Help Desk Institute web site (http://www.thinkhdi.com/) for survey examples. Can also find other examples of help desk surveys.
  • ISAC can review suggested questions.
  • How does this fit with TechQual?

Also discussed the proposal that Sharp submitted. They are combining the Service Desk and Reference questions into one survey and will probably do this survey in the Spring. Sharp mentioned that they didn't learn much from the last survey. The responses were generally positive. Question was raised about why they would want to do the survey again. Basically thought it gave people an opportunity to give feedback. The goal is to find out if the changes made in response to the last LibQual have had an effect on the service provided.

We discussed some general questions like concern about survey fatigue. Question was raised about the low response rate. If we are only getting a few responses can people really get survey fatigue? Does a low response rate mean that everything is fine?