Researcher feedback as impact evidence - a practical guide for academic libraries

In academic libraries, there are many opportunities every day to capture evidence of your library’s impact. This might be a one-to-one library skills session, group information literacy (IL) training or small, everyday interactions with students, academic staff and colleagues. Although it is often routine practice to send a feedback form after a group training session, the outcomes of these smaller interactions often go unrecorded. That's a shame, because libraries lose lots of evidence of their impact by not collecting feedback from every one-to-one research consultation, enquiry or appointment.

In this blog post we want to talk about a few small changes that you can make to support building a culture of collecting impact evidence in academic libraries, without needing to make  big changes or putting extra work on top of the already busy staff workloads.

There are many types of quantitative and qualitative impact evidence being collected in academic libraries, from space usage data to research impact evidence. And there are different types of evaluation measures used to collect this evidence. In this post, we are particularly focused on different types of researcher feedback. Specifically, how collecting feedback from researchers and other library users can be built into existing services and interactions rather than relying on annual satisfaction surveys or one-off evaluations. 

When we talk about researcher feedback, we mean anything that a researcher tells you after a one-to-one consultation, a group session or any other interaction with your library. It can also include feedback from the teaching staff or other colleagues, shared with you in person, by email or other means. These are all potential evidence of impact that can be collected and used to show the value of your library’s work.

Individual researcher feedback is often overlooked, as it can seem anecdotal at first. Receiving an email from a researcher or student acknowledging that your research consultation has saved them time and improved their search skills, or a lecturer thanking you for contributing to their reading list, can be evidence of your impact on their performance and work. Or, it can be evidence of their perception of the value of a library or their attitudes towards your library and services.

Researchers are often willing to share their feedback when approached (particularly if this is in a streamlined, but personalised way that doesn’t require too much of their time). Collecting researcher feedback can help you build a strong portfolio of impact evidence. With a bit of habit-building, this can become part of your team’s every day workflow without too much effort.

Receiving feedback from academic staff can also be very useful as they often observe how their students interact with your services and can contribute to providing evidence on the impact of your library services, such as IL training on student learning and their performance.

Communicating the value of your library and the services you offer is crucial for demonstrating the impact of your work to funders and other stakeholders. Working closely with academic staff and researchers helps build a culture of evaluation that effectively demonstrates your commitment to and alignment with the institutional mission and goals. 

We acknowledge that big changes or even starting from scratch is sometimes unavoidable. But when it comes to organisational change or attempts for building a new workplace culture, we are strong proponents of small, incremental changes. These often prove more effective than big (sometimes empty) gestures that often fail to bring everyone on the same page. 

Building a consistent workflow in your team can definitely help. One of the first steps might be developing a habit of asking researchers for feedback, rather than waiting for them to volunteer it. This can be in the form of microsurveys that are automatically included in email communications with library users at the end of a research support enquiry. And as the name suggests, this doesn’t have to be a long survey. On the contrary, a short, ready-made questionnaire that is easy for someone to complete works best. Timing is also very important. Capturing evidence as soon as you provide a service can increase people’s willingness to provide feedback.

Another good practice is to be transparent and clear about how you manage permissions of any feedback shared with you. If you are contacting researchers directly following an information support enquiry, providing an option to provide feedback anonymously is always a good idea. And if you want to be able to re-use feedback provided in other settings, make sure this is clearly and succinctly explained and people understand what permission they are granting, if they choose to.

Collecting researcher feedback as impact evidence doesn’t need to be complicated, but the process is most effective when it’s consistent and intentional. 

If your team is already collecting feedback from library users, have a closer look whether there is scope for improvement. Small refinements in format or timing can make a big difference. And if you are not yet in the habit of collecting feedback, there’s no better time to start by introducing  small incremental changes to your research support workflows.

And a final reminder of something we’ve talked about before - the best approach is asking clear, specific questions focused on outcomes. Not just a record that this interaction happened, but the evidence of real change. Don’t miss the opportunity to find out directly from users what worked, what didn’t, and what difference your interaction made to someone.