How do you gauge the success of library services or programs? Determining students' satisfaction is a critical mission. Surveys are practical tools to analyze and evaluate our success as well as areas needing improvement. An effective survey, however, is complicated to develop. Framing the questions to gather valid evidence is only a first step. Administering the survey and analyzing the results are equally important. Overcoming student skepticism and disinterest are significant challenges.

One roundtable discussion at the ALL-SIS business meeting in Washington, DC, will be devoted to building a user survey that gets results. We will engage a collaborative exercise to produce a sample survey document. Our discussion will focus on question development, disseminations, collection, and analytical techniques. We will project the evolving document on a screen so that we may edit as we talk. The final survey will be available electronically on the ALL-SIS web page.

To build the foundation for our discussion ahead of time, we are collecting sample questions and survey documents. If you have materials to share, we encourage you to send them to: