In honor of National Library Week, UH librarians are surveying the faculty and students about what they love about their library.
The survey will help librarians celebrate their success and find areas the UH libraries can improve on.
“I’m hoping we get a lot of helpful feedback from our students,” Architecture Librarian Catherine Essinger said. “We want to give them the best services that we can, and to do that, they have to tell us what those services are.”
Throughout the week, a survey will be available for faculty and students to provide feedback about the library’s services.
The UH librarians have set up booths around various campus locations to give away prizes and answer questions that faculty or students may have about their library services.
“We need to know what people really want so we can expand (our) services,” Essinger said.
Booths will be available at the UC Satellite on Thursday and Friday
“(This) is a good week to think about (your) library,” Essinger said.
All together, UH libraries own more than 2.5 million volumes, 81,000 journals and serialized literature, 20,000 electronic books and 387 computers for students to use.
The M.D. Anderson Memorial Library has also renovated its Learning Commons, providing students with more computer access and the ability to obtain any software needed, such as Adobe design suite, AutoCAD and more.
“I would hope that our vision for the library (would) closely align with the needs of our students and our faculty,” she said.
To further celebrate National Library Week, librarians from UH are attending the Texas Library Association’s Annual Conference in San Antonio on Wednesday through Saturday.
The event is being held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Conventer Center.
The conference is an event that librarians from around Texas attend to promote and improve library services throughout the state.
This year, they will have the opportunity to hear from NPR correspondent Scott Simon and Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia.
Throughout the conference, librarians will be making presentations covering topics such as developing library collections, budgeting, library instruction, special collections and electronic resources.
According to Essinger, UH librarians generally want to use this week to plan for the future by growing individually and listening to the requests of faculty and students.
“We want our priorities for next year to be the students’ and the faculty’s priorities,” she said. “We’re public servants, so (we) have to just listen.”
Those wishing to participate in the online survey can visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/lovethelibrary
