Research Workshop

This small workshop over the course of 2 days focused on research and analysis. After reading the numerous articles assigned to us to read and prepare ourselves for this workshop we were put into groups to put it into practise. 

Our Case – UCL Library 

My group was assigned to the school (UCL) library. Our case was that the library was not being actively used as much as they hoped and that they think that modernising their services can help. They also saw that students had a hard time finding out the different services the library had to offer, and we were tasked to research different things about this case. 

Research and Collection

Following the presentation that was shown to us, a model of KWHL was used. It allowed us to organise the information we knew, the information we wanted to know, how we would obtain that information, and what we have learned from that information.  This allowed us to clearly see what we knew, what we wanted to know, and how we learned it, and gave us a clear guide on how to go about it.

Our group split into two parts, one responsible for conducting primary research while the other conducts secondary research. The primary research team focused on formulating an interview structure. First with their presentation and questions to ask. While the secondary research team relied on the internet to find examples or guidance on library modernising or tips or attempts to increase activity in the library, we did two rounds of this.

Data Collection Analysis

After collecting our data through note taking on docs the next day we organised and analysed them according to the following:

If the data was qualitative or quantitative

• Mainly qualitative 

If the data was more to business, user, or technology 

Business

• Interview with Rasmus (Client)

User 

• Interviews with students 

Technology 

• Secondary research (trends, what other libraries have done)

What other methods could have been used

• Questionnaire  

Using the knowledge and data  we obtained we were able to formulate our problem more specifically. We concluded that the library experiences that students do not“ enjoy the facilities as much, but why is that the reason? How can we create more attraction towards the resources and facilities the library has to offer. Why is that student struggling to find material that is relevant to their study, and how can we expand and better the library’s collection, so that students get the most out of the materials they need most. 

What we can offer is that we focus on creating a more attractive library to students. Why is it that students should struggle to find relevant material for their studies and how can we best solve this problem for both the students and the library?

Sharing and Discussing Results 

We were then asked to present our findings, methods, and analysis to other groups with the same case to see what we did similar and what we did differently. Interesting points were mentioned and other approaches were taken in relation to data collection. Some students chose to rely solely on questionnaires, some on observations, and some on interviews. One commonality was that data was hard to obtain as no one had purpose to use the library and did not have experience. 

However it was nice that this small workshop was spread across two days. We tried our best to collect data on the first day but after some not so successful collections we had the first half of the second day to do so, but unfortunately only small data was obtained. We discussed in my group that if we were to approach this case again we would send out questionnaires to students at the school because there was no luck in observing or asking other MMD students as there was no need for them to use the library. A questionnaire would allow us to obtain data easier and faster and reach a bigger sample and obtain good data.