In August we announced our intent to survey faculty and graduate/professional students about how the libraries can best support their research, teaching, and learning needs. We are using survey instruments created by Ithaka S+R, a national non-profit that works with many libraries to gather evidence for use in strategic planning. Ithaka S+R is particularly well-known for their US Faculty Survey.

Our goal is to better understand faculty and graduate/professional student research, teaching, and study needs and their perceptions about how the libraries support these needs in order to make strategic decisions about services.

The surveys will launch Monday, October 2^nd and run through Friday, October 27^th. We expect the survey to take 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Ithaka will distribute the surveys to the survey populations via e-mail. Each recipient will have a customized link to the survey that will allow respondents to stop and re-start the survey where they left off if needed. Ithaka will also be able to send reminders. Survey results will be anonymous and we will not be able to track any data back to specific respondents.

Our Marketing Team will help us promote the survey by encouraging faculty and graduate/professional students to look for the e-mail sent to them with the survey link. We will also need everyone in the Libraries to encourage faculty and graduate/professional students to complete the survey. We need as many survey responses as possible to ensure our data truly reflects the needs of our users.

The Ithaka Survey Team is Shannon Cary, Mardy Eimers (from MU Institutional Research), Gwen Gray, Jeannette Pierce, and Caryn Scoville. Thanks so much to this group for all of the work done thus far. Let us know if you have any questions.

Jeannette