[Web4lib] Thanks for participating in the LII 2006 User Survey!

[K.G. Schneider]

This is just a preliminary report on the LII 2006 user survey. I'm writing
this prior to going to PLA, in preconference gear-up mode, so it's somewhat
rudimentary. But I wanted to THANK everyone who contributed. We had over
6,000 completed surveys, 1,471 suggestions for addressing our budget
shortfall, and 1,954 comments, all of them useful, most of which made us
glow. 

The completed-survey response rate is the first significant boost, from
4,087 last year to 6,105 this year. We believe this is largely because we
reached out more aggressively to the blogging/RSS community, and because LII
users responded to our request for feedback about our 50% reduction in
primary funding for the grant year beginning July 1, 2006. 

This year, our response group is somewhat younger (the 26-44 age range rose
from 29% to 35%), more likely to be from California (22%, up from 18%), more
likely to have visited the LII website in the last seven days (55%, up from
50%), more likely to visit LII at least once a week (53% up from 50%), and
more likely to have learned of LII within the last year (14%, up from 11%).
All nice indications of a resource hitting its stride and growing, something
corroborated by our strong increases in use and newsletter subscribers in
the last several years. Our users are also more likely this year to be
working librarians (69%, up from 63%) or library students (10%, up from 8%).
We clearly have a strong "business to business" component to our services!

Other quick facts from the LII 2006 user survey: 

Overwhelmingly, respondents rejected the idea of charging for the website
(88% somewhat or strongly disagree with that idea) or charging for the
newsletter (80% disagree). Ads and underwriting were more palatable (74% and
76%, respectively, strongly or somewhat agree). Only 12% thought we should
take no action at all to address our funding shortfall. 

We received many good ideas for addressing our funding shortfall, including
partnering with other state libraries and organizations (something we've
been experimenting with, so validation here is really helpful), an online
store (in work), online donations (while we agree, we'd have to structure
this extremely carefully, since our primary funding source, LSTA, has
rigorous guidelines), plus foundation grants (a couple in work, probably a
growth area for us) and so forth. 

Our regional content is appreciated by our partnering states (if you live
outside of California or Washington state, you would not have seen these
questions). 79% of California users find our California-related websites
very or extremely valuable--almost identical to the Washington state
response (78%). Again, there was an uncanny parallel for the question about
regional websites in our newsletter, New This Week: 63% of respondents from
both states found these very or extremely valuable. 

The percentage of respondents who read our RSS feed roughly doubled to 15%
of our newsletter subscribers, though in this survey sample, fewer read the
newsletter (75% versus 80% last year). Again, given that actual newsletter
subscriptions have more than doubled in the past year, that data probably
means that this survey had much greater reach than the subscriber base we
relied on for our previous three surveys. 

Most unexpectedly and wonderfully, we had nice upward bumps for nearly all
of the answers for our question, "Tell us all the ways you use LII": 

As a tool for answering reference questions: 60% (from 52%)
As an instructional tool: 47% (from 38%)
As quick access to other search tools: 36% (from 30%)
As a resource for links for my library's website: 44% (from 41%)
As a resource for links to pathfinders and other guides: 40% (from 35%)
As an alternative search tool for kids and teens: 29% (from 18%)
For personal development or enrichment 68% (up from 59%)
As an alert service for myself or coworkers: 41% (up from 35%)
As a resource to share with clubs, local newspapers, etc.: 12% (up from 9%)

Most likely reaching beyond our newsletter reader base helped this question,
though we'd like to think that the new design and new features we added in
the past year have made us more useful for these purposes. 

We will be coding the free-form responses this week and next, and creating
some cross-tabulations to help us develop a strong survey summary report.
Meanwhile, here are some typical responses to the last question on the
survey, "Do you have other comments, feedback, ideas, or suggestions for
Librarians' Internet Index?"

"I'm always amazed at the variety of interesting web sites in the weekly
newsletter and grateful that someone takes the time to search them out for
the readers."

"Think you have done an outstanding service."

"I really look forward to my weekly email from lii.org knowing that the
websites given have already been monitored by professional colleagues."

"You are a national treasure and should have national funding."

"It's a fabulous public service that I rely on as a freelance writer."

"This is the most useful resource I have come across for finding quality
information on the net."

"Your website is wonderful; your trainings are valuable and informative.
Don't Disappear!!"

"It's such a wonderful service, it's my favorite site to use. It will be
terrible if your services are cut."

"Nowhere else can one find such a broad but well-vetted resource. It would
be a shame to lose it." 

"Thanks again for the great job that you do. LII just keeps getting better
and better, and more essential to finding high-quality information online on
all subjects." 

"LII is an essential tool for searching Information on the Internet. I use
it daily and teach it daily, in public classes and on the reference desk. It
is essential that while search engines just return unedited lists of sites
LII supplies a list edited and chosen for their usefulness to citizens. LII
is part of the American civic promise of good government service. It's not
just that I can't live without LII, the public can not live without a robust
LII."

"I work at 3 community colleges, and always end my Bibliographic Instruction
Sessions with LII.ORG!!!! The teachers and students really appreciate the
quality, trustworthy sites that are available."

I am wildly biased, but I fully agree LII rates four exclamation points. I
feel that way about the team that makes it happen--the best librarians in
LibraryLand!!!!

Thanks again for your thoughtful, enthusiastic, helpful responses to our
annual survey, and we'll produce a more formal report by early April. Feel
free to email or IM me with your questions and comments. Hope to see many of
you at PLA! 

Karen G. Schneider
Director, Librarians' Internet Index
http://lii.org kgs at lii.org
AIM/Skype liichief
Websites you can trust!