Streaming video in libraries has been available for over ten years, but has recently greatly expanded in use and importance. Indeed, demand has increased so much that many libraries across the country were forced in the last year to limit streaming video to classroom use only. The University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG) is no exception, with streaming media usage doubling over the last three years. This growth combined with the relative newness of many of these streaming options meant that the collection development librarians at UNCG did not know how these services were being used in the classroom, where faculty learned about library streaming media, and what issues faculty faced technologically when they tried to use our collection. Many of these questions had been sparked by earlier marketing research conducted at UNCG, which demonstrated that while faculty were interested in using streaming video, there was a good deal of confusion about how to access it through the library or what was available. In order to better understand these survey results, the collections team at UNCG decided to go straight to the source and speak to faculty using focus groups.
This presentation has two main objectives. The first is to share the results of these focus groups with librarians, especially examining it in conjunction with previous marketing survey results. In the qualitative analysis of the four focus groups we conducted, we discovered strong faculty preferences in how they want to receive information and training, when marketing efforts were most likely to be impactful, and what types of discovery techniques they are using and want to be able to use to locate streaming video. We believe that sharing our findings will help other librarians as they develop new collection policies, decide what products to purchase, and consider how to get the word out about collections. We will compare our own findings with those of the few individual interview studies conducted by librarians around streaming media in the last five years to build a more comprehensive view of trends and lessons.
The second main objective of this presentation is to explore the methodology used as a model for libraries to develop collection and marketing strategies in new and emerging areas that are informed by direct, in-depth user input. By using our focus group as a case study, we will highlight key aspects of developing research questions, creating focus group scripts, recruitment, and running these groups. We will also examine the pitfalls we ran into so that others can avoid them.
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