What does the community want from their public library?: Getting in touch with non-users
Date
2022-04-20
Authors
McLean, Jaclyn
Juorio, Alex
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ORCID
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Conference Presentation
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Abstract
In 2020, the Prince Albert Public Library Board set a new strategic plan that included developing a community research program. The Library Director began working with a researcher from the University of Saskatchewan, a research plan was devised, and plans made for summer 2020. When the pandemic began we had to rethink our original plan to survey the community in person at public events. As the pandemic continued and we were unable to gather in person, we identified alternate options. We decided to focus on an online survey and work with community groups for recruitment. We looked at existing non-user research from a variety of enterprises, and created a survey adapted to a public library environment. We worked with the Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research (CHASR) to refine our study and build some maps to visualize our data. Our survey sowed the seeds, and will close in October 2021, so we do not yet know what we will harvest, but we look forward to analyzing and sharing our data. The goal of this research is to help the public library develop services and programs based on community-identified needs. The library strives to continue to grow and build services, programs, and branches, and to expand our outreach in response to this survey. We are excited to see the outcomes from this study as we build a research program that will continue to be responsive to the needs of our community as we build a public library for the future.
Description
Keywords
public library, survey, non-users