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Focus on the Community
Who knows best what our community, especially our students, need?
- A person's need vs. what we think they need
- Who is in our community?
- A diverse range of needs
The community can tell us what they need through
- Formal needs assessment (example from Wheaton Public Library)
- Surveys (college-wide, voluntary, service-based such as chat reference)
- Interviews or focus groups
- Statistics
- Personas
Create a Persona
Create fictitious profiles of people to aid with community needs assessment
Characteristics of your persona
- Name
- Personal: age, languages, gender, race, ethnicity, disability
- Professional: work experience, education, purpose of their use of library services
- Technical: devices used on a regular basis, software, hours online per day
- Motivation: what motivates them, how do they want to use the library, what do they need from the library?
- Additional details: you choose
Personas, spring 2020
Action After Assessment
Focus on a type of need
- Collections
- Technology
- Website
- Online resources
- Building/spaces
- Research help
Keep in mind
- Demand for new/existing resources
- Duplication of efforts
- Existing resources to improve
- Greatest impact for the most amount of people
- What are other libraries doing well?
