CIPFA - Performance in Public Services: Social Research

Plus

The Public Library Users Survey (PLUS) is a national model for surveying users of public libraries concerning various aspects of the service.  It includes questions about the staff, the stock and the building, and it asks about user satisfaction as well as some questions about the individuals themselves.  It proposes a uniform methodology and uniform questions in order to achieve consistency for valid national, regional and local comparisons.

The PLUS tells you what your users think of the library, its opening hours and the service that they received, as well as what they have come to the library for and what they came away with.  It also asks the users a few questions about themselves and whether the library has had any impact on their lives.  From this information, you will be able to make improvements to your service provision by acting on user experience; you will also be able to target areas of the population where you may be wishing to increase usage.

Of what use is a user survey to a public library service?  The answer to this becomes obvious when you think about what your library management system tells you and, more significantly, what it doesn't tell you.  The ever-difficult question of quality as opposed to quantity becomes more easily answered when users are able to tell you that they thought their overall experience of the service was very good or good rather than you being able to say how many items they borrowed.  Elected members are always more receptive to opinions of users rather than the endless stream of statistics with which they are normally bombarded.  The PLUS enables you to build improvements into the service, improvements which have arisen from user opinion of the service rather than your view of what you think users think! Your service can, as a result, become more customer-focused and more receptive to complaints or compliments.