Ivan Trundle Manager, communications, systems and publishing [please remove the '.nospam' from address]

inCite : July 2004 : article

Reader feedback

Continuation of survey analysis

Last month we reported on the results of the inCite survey conducted at the beginning of the year. Your responses painted a very clear picture of the profile of an average reader, and will assist the inCite team to shape the future direction of the publication. Without a doubt, the question labelled 'If I were editor...' elicited enough comment to fill more than one column - selected highlights appear below. All of the comments contribute to the overall picture that we have gleaned, and combined with the responses to the other questions, have assisted us in planning to make further improvements to inCite.

Many readers were appreciative of having an opportunity to record their views, and to contribute to the newsmagazine in a direct way: "Long overdue... Hopefully the members will give some 'feedback' to what is wanted over 'what' is delivered." "It's a great idea. I hope the results are constructive." "Great idea to find out what the audience wants - hopefully you will get a great response from various demographic groups. Was good that it was available online too..." "Thanks for the chance to offer feedback!" "...hope it helps change certain things. :-)" "I hope the info collected will be useful for future planning." "Great to have an opportunity to provide feedback." "Good idea to have a survey." "This is a significant survey." "Great way to stay in touch. thank you." "Doing a great job - couldn't keep up without it."

Many also enjoyed completing the survey: "Best servey [sic] in terms of layout and speed of completion I've ever done online!" "very entertaining" "Nice how many of the prompts were suggested/selected." "I like the sense of humour - good to see." "Easy to answer!" "Didn't take long to complete. Good." "Make it regular and it will be possible to achieve continuous improvement."

However, more than one or two eagle-eyes picked up our lapse in spelling in the online form (corrected mid-survey): "That the word influencial could have been spelt correctly 'influential'"; "influential not influencial".

The printed form came under fire from some quarters. Cost influenced our decision against making it an insert, but we will endeavour to offer alternatives in future (and fax copies worked fine): "Tear-out page should not mutilate journal. Insert would be preferable." "Not a clever idea to print the form with a grey background and then ask it to be faxed!"

We did receive some criticism about the delivery and timing. This was most unfortunate: a delay in production, and no delay permissable in the deadline for comment, presented us with a dilemma which was unavoidable: "Good luck! It is good to see that you are pro-active in seeking feedback. However, I received my copy of INCITE on Friday 7 February 2004 only to find that you wanted responses by Monday 10 February ... frankly this provides ALIA with poor PR..." "I received my copy of 'Incite' yesterday 9/2. If there seems to be a lack of response from WA, that may explain it!" "Nearly didnt do it because I thought I'd missed the deadline ... back to comment on timely availability!" The survey itself took some brick-bats: "It could focus more on content of inCite" "The print is a bit small and rather hard to read (might be the fault of my terminal)." "Not enough space..." "LIS budget not applicable to library supplier respondents, should be a 'not applicable' choice for this response."

Some questioned the relevance of the survey, or made general comments about inCite: "I wonder what benefit this survey can do to inCite & ALIA? It's obvious ALIA is thinking of costs & is using this survey as a justification for a)remodelling inCite & b)saving printing & postage costs by making it available by PDF & trying to influence the survey by 'asking to save trees', how professional is that? It's a crappy, short survey that should be seen as such. Leave inCite alone." "Its [sic] only testing the status quo and therefore the results mightn't show the way forward"; "Would of [sic] prefered to comment about the regular articles in addition to selecting the spot. But I know this is done." "I hope you don't take the responses, or even the lack of them, too seriously ... inCite perhaps needs reading in proof so that we don't offend too many famous or dead people by getting the captions confused..."

As alluded to in last month's column, the PDF question aroused the most interest (lack of room precludes printing full responses). A selection are printed here: "If you do consider pdf as a serious option you must keep the file small to cater for those of us who do not have broadband - will never have broadband ... Yes - save a tree or two." "As I am currently unemployed and using a very slow dial up connection ... nothing would annoy me more than a .pdf attachment of any size." "I'm not really conversant with size of PDF files - but I'd happily download if it took less than about 40 seconds..."

In the next few months, changes will be made that reflect the wishes and demands of the membership of ALIA. Nothing too ground-breaking, since the overwhelming responses from the survey indicate that we are on the right track, and heading in the right direction.