The overall process was, briefly, the analysis of a collection of ridiculous surveys, preceded by the development of the ridiculous questionnaire and followed by the analysis of the ridiculous answers, a literature survey was deemed un-necessary as we really didn't care that much, and your looking at the writing up right now.

We were motivated to employ a qualitative approach by previous survey on the library day experience (2001). This revealed large disparities between what staff and participants thought students experienced and what students reported on their experience. Much of the frustration centered on the illegible handwriting, apathy and spelling issues - I personally did not notice this.

Multiple choice and open ended questions were distributed to hundreds of students in the cafeteria  and common student areas (areas where students hang-out, not areas where "common students" hand out). These multiple "guess" and short answers and even some paragraphs and fairy tales were  carefully and lovingly tabulated and analyzed by several specially trained staff members resulting in this wonderful written report and web presention to the students, staff and faculty of PCC or anyone bored enough to read it. The data and resulting reports have served as a basis for several discussions with the librarians, staff and students. On the basis of this, various prototypes for new surveys and questionnaires have evolved. The new questionnaires are in the analyse phase in conjunction with a much needed and neglected literature review. This article records the final results of the initial survey distributed in the fall of 2003.

The research design was grounded in a dual action quantitative and qualitative action-research framework for several reasons. In 1992 there had been no systematic enquiry in the cafe into exactly what the problems are that students have in the library, why they have them and what can be done to ameliorate them. Given the context of the enquiry -- education in transition with little data, on hand -- the dual action qualitative qualitative research approach was adopted. It was thought that the researcher was not yet in a position to seek precise relationships between limited sets of already fixed categories from previous surveys and questionaires. It still needed to be established what was thought and done in the library by whom and when and if not, why not? Furthermore, far from being a dispassionate observer, the researcher and other investigators were involved in the library and with students (well, we are not actually "involved" with any students at this time - at least not that I know of...) as part of their everyday work. What was required, therefore, was a research methodology that allowed categories and questions to form in the process of the research, and which accessed patterns of relationships between many categories normally hidden from view - several because they should be hidden.

Since the researcher was part of the process it made sense to use action research as another methodological framework. The key points of action research (Kemmis & McTaggart 1988) revolve around process and participation, and short-term, small-scale investigations that allow for immediate impact. An action-research approach also made sense given the developmental bias of subjects in question and the constraints of resources.

The surveys were collected from two cafe areas: Winter Haven and Lakeland, via extremely friendly and outgoing library staff and faculty members. In many instances, students clearly responded to the questions with passion and interest for their future gain of candy and gifts. The library staff and faculty in the were specifically briefed to ask open questions and to be open and giving to students who may be library or librarian phobic.

More than 300 hundred surveys were collected but after reading only a few it was clear that a limit to the range of catagories for the top ten lists could be made had been reached. In terms of expense of typing and reproduction of surveys, it was felt that we really didn't care, because we didn't bother doing that, for preliminary enquiry, of the tenor and content of what students thought. There was easily enough responses to indicate an element of group thinking. In the discussion, the numbers in brackets after a statement refers to the number of the survey in a separately published booklet that does not exist yet. The analysis of surveys led to an additional report that focused on noise, availability of material, the computer system and library staff which didn't really matter because we are already pretty much strapped for money as it is. The essays caused me to question whether students had a concept of information and a sense of strategy.  I have no idea what that means, but doesn't sound clever.  Not surprisingly many students indicated a lack of knowledge of basic library usage or that the library existed at all and many others suggested that further enquiry should focus on basic knowledge and attitudes towards the library for many were afraid of the library and felt librarians were mean shush monsters who might whack them with a ruler if the spoke out aloud in their presence.  How students learn about the library, and a more precise identification of the problem points is our future goal.

In an attempt to explore these issues and to pursue the overall picture of students' use or non-use of the library, three different questionnaires could be developed to extend the range of questions. These could be distributed across the faculty and student community, broadening the scope of the enquiry, but we probably won't do that.

Although figures are given and percentages will be quoted, these are rough guides to tendencies or just plain rubbish. This article is not based on statistical analysis. It is totally nonsense (as far as I know) and if you've actually read this whole thing about methodology, you should probably know now that it was something that was shamelessly copied and pasted from some "real" research article that I found and quickly "doctored" up to make it sound like it somehow related to our Library Day survey thing - see how fun and easy research is.