Funny isn’t it. When I wrote that last post, it hadn’t really filtered through my head, that my library service was being involved in a similar public survey so soon.

This one is a little different than previous ones however. The Library Census 2006 is being run by I & J Management Services, on behalf of Viclink, LibraryBoard of Victoria and the State Library of Victoria and is intended to get a snapshot of online users of Victorian public libraries. How is that unusual you may ask?

Well in two ways really. One is that my library service was involved in the trialling of the survey a few weeks ago, to make sure that the questions were understandable etc. That involved marshalling users within our main library one afternoon, to take the time out to hear an introduction, then actually fill in the survey online. A couple of our outgoing, enthusiastic staff were most innovative in achieving good numbers for this purpose. Due to their efforts, we were able to get a good cross section of people who were all very helpful and cooperative.

The second is that at the same time that the online survey is running (ie. now), we are also running a shortened version of the census survey in our branches. The aim is to enable us to get an idea of the demographics of those people who are using our facilities physically, as a basis for comparison to those who are using us virtually. It will be fascinating to see the results on a number of levels, so I will keep you posted.

onlinesurveys” rel=”tag”>online surveys
http://technorati.com/tag/public libraries” rel=”tag”>public libraries