Client: Jan Wallace, Head, David Lam Library

Background

As students of the Sauder School of Business, all of us are extremely concerned about our learning environment. David Lam Library is one of the most highly utilized spaces in the Sauder building. A very important and often overlooked aspect of this library is its website. Our goal for this research project is to investigate certain issues relating to the David Lam Library website.

In order to obtain information on the website, Jan Wallace, Head of David Lam Library, has asked the Student Experience Research Advisory (SERA) to gather information about several issues relations to the David Lam website.

This research project is to be divided into two phases. This proposal only addresses phase 2 of the project. Phase 2 deals with issues relating with the website only. This part of the project will be conducted from January 2011.

Method

For this research project, our method will be split into two parts. First part will be done using a small survey questionnaire. The second part will involve action research.

1. Questionnaire:

For the first part of this research, we will be using a small questionnaire to gauge the current knowledge of the David Lam website.  Most of these questions will be fairly general. Some examples of these questions are:

• Do you know there is a DLAM Library website?
• How have you used it?
• What parts of it have you used?
• Did you have trouble finding what you needed?
• How have you contacted librarians in the past?
• Do you know how to get help from a librarian?

After this part is completed then we will move to part 2 of the data gathering stage.

1. Action Research:

For this part of the research we will be using action research. To further elaborate, we will be showing visuals of the current David Lam website and ask for feedback from each individual. Each individual will be handed a sheet of questions that students must answer individually. After each individual fills out the sheets, then we will open up the floor to general discussion. We will then use the individual answers to cross check the answers we receive from the general discussion. Some of the example questions for this part are:

• Are the labels intuitive? If not, please suggest more intuitive ones. (For example, do you know what a Research Guide is?)
• What’s right with our website?
• What’s wrong with our website?
• What suggestions for improvement would you give us?