LibQUAL Timeline and Procedures

Summary Steps:

• Register for survey at: http://www.libqual.org/Register/index.cfm. Once you register, an invoice will automatically be generated. Be sure to select the "Georgia Consortium" so that you'll be included in the group analysis and the 5 local questions chosen will automatically appear in your survey instrument.
• Check with your institution about human subjects research requirements. At Georgia Tech, we didn't have to go through the process in that we didn't plan to publish our results.
• Sign up for LibQUAL+ listserv (for details, see Section VIII of the Procedures Manual).
• Decide if you're going to sample your faculty & student population or put the survey on your website. NOTE: Most libraries do not survey their library staff, but ask them to test and preview the survey.
• If sampling or e-mailing the entire campus, you need to determine the best source on your campus for e-mail addresses (this step isn't necessary if you're putting the survey on your website). Georgia Tech's Registrar's Office was able to provide a sampling of email addresses from Banner and then one of our systems staff members cut and pasted them into Eudora email.
• Complete Survey Preferences, Survey Customization, and Representativeness Questionnaire pages on LibQUAL website. One of the things you decide when you complete the Survey Preferences, is when you want your survey to begin and end (we kept it up for 3 weeks, some do more and some less). The Representativeness Questionnaire includes questions related to campus demographics, e.g. the number of students, faculty, in the various disciplines taught.
• Determine what publicity is needed – it could be tents near computers in the library, posters in the library and elsewhere, articles or ads in student newspapers and faculty newsletters, etc.
• Decide if you're going to have incentive prizes – bookstore gift certificates are the easiest. ARL sends you 25 randomly selected names and email addresses when your survey ends (from these GT gave prizes to the top 5 on the list).
• Develop your letter of invitation and reminders.
• Administer your survey; it's fun to monitor the comments, which you can do immediately online. You can analyze the comments if you wish but it's optional.
• Complete Post Hoc Questionnaire and Evaluation Questionnaire.

Timeline for Fall'06 participants; the dates for Spring'06 participants are 8-9 months earlier (most dates are approximate):

January

• Training session for libraries participating in LibQUAL+ is held in conjunction with the ALA Midwinter Conference (in 2006: January 23, 9am – 12 noon, in San Antonio).

Up to August 31

• Register online for the survey at: http://www.libqual.org/Register/index.cfm.
• Subscribe to ARL-QUALITY listserv (an open forum). For information on how to subscribe, see section VIII of the Procedures Manual, under "Participant Resources."
• Identify and initiate steps needed to obtain clearance for human subjects' research if needed at your institution.
• Identify appropriate data source to provide valid e-mail addresses for selected sample populations (e.g. campus computing, registrar's office, library patron database). If you plan to post it on your website, you can skip this step.
• The online Survey Preferences, Survey Customization, and Representativeness Questionnaire pages will be open in the LibQUAL+ Survey Management Center: http://www.libqual.or/Manage/index.cfm); several of these steps must be completed before you can launch your survey.

June or later

• Once, you've completed the steps above, the survey is available for participants to pre-test within their libraries.

July or August

• Draw final e-mail samples after institution's fall enrollment process is complete. Some smaller libraries email their entire faculty and student populace. Some libraries put the survey on their website and encourage students and faculty to participate through a variety of publicity efforts.

September – December

• The LibQUAL+ survey is open to the public.
• If sending an invitation to an email sample or your entire campus: send a personalized e-mail message from the library director announcing the upcoming LibQUAL+ survey (see Appendix B for a sample survey notification)
• Make any necessary adjustments to the sample groups (i.e. replacing invalid e-mail addresses with valid e-mail addresses as needed).
• Send e-mail inviting your sample group to participate in the survey (see Appendix C for a sample survey invitation).
• After sending out your survey invitation, send 2-3 reminder e-mail messages at 3-5 day intervals (see Appendix D for sample survey reminders).

December

• Survey availability ends; data analysis begins.

After December

• Results notebooks and survey data files are available to participants.
• Complete LibQUAL+ Post Hoc Questionnaire (each participating library must do this).
• Complete LibQUAL+ Evaluation Questionnaire (all individual survey liaisons are asked to complete an Evaluation Questionnaire).