Do They Really Know What They Need? Prototypes and Different Research Methods as a Means of Testing Students‘Feedback – A Case-Study

Abstract

Adopting a demand-oriented perspective helps librarians to understand their users better. Involving them in ongoing changes has the potential to have a lasting positive effect on the satisfaction of existing users and the recruitment of new ones. Three case-studies, which involved creating new learning spaces at the University Library of Hildesheim lead to the understanding that librarians need to employ attitudinal and behavioural research techniques to reach that goal because users – as it turns out – often do not really know what they need until they get a chance to try it.

Keywords:

• Academic libraries
• feedback
• prototypes
• study spaces

Notes

https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/media/presse/20190109_Rede_des_Praesidenten_Professor_Wolfgang-Uwe_Friedrich_Neujahrsempfang_der_Uni_Hildesheim.pdf; last visit on 07.08.2020

2 See the following statement of the University of Kassel as an example for almost all academic libraries, at least in Germany: https://blog.ub.uni-kassel.de/blog/2017/05/17/essen-trinken-in-der-bibliothek/; last visit on 13.12.2019. Public libraries tend to be more open to this issue.

3 See this discussion on reddit.com: https://www.reddit.com/r/Libraries/comments/3v7s4v/should_food_and_drinks_be_allowed_in_libraries/; last visit on 13.12.2019.

4 Another interesting case-study would be the comparison of different social-media channels which takes into account that Instagram is used more frequently by young adults at the age of 18 to 24 than Facebook. See: Haak (2019).