Mindy Thuna, University of Toronto Mississauga Have you ever run a focus group? Let me tell you, it is not easy to a) get enough people to come (although food helps.. a lot.. but that, of course, requires money) b) find dates and times when people who MIGHT be coerced into coming will actually show up and c) facilitate a conversation, i.e. no talking or expressing an opinion or raising an eyebrow. All that aside, between December 6, 2010 and January 6, 2011, I ran 5 focus groups for graduate students at the UTM campus of the University of Toronto. In each 2 hour session I facilitated a conversation between from 4 to 10 students in both professional and doctoral stream programs to assess their information needs and wants as part of a larger graduate student needs assessment on library services and spaces that I am currently completing. I heard ranting, compliments, tales of woe and disappointment and forced them to draw pictures. I encouraged them to eat more and to talk more about where and how they find information to fulfill their scholarly needs. This pecha kucha will focus on the preliminary analysis of the results of these focus groups.

1. Focus groups to assess library services and spaces UTM Graduate Students, the library wants to talk to YOU!

2. M. Thuna Primary Investigator E. Hajderi Graduate Student Assistant S. Mahabir Undergraduate Student Assistant

3. How do we get them? Lots of emails… Pretty pictures Hallway confrontations Free food A prize

4. Demographics - Gender UTM Grad Population FocusGroups Female Male

5. Demographics – Type of Program UTM Grad Population Focus Groups Professional Stream Research Stream

7. Sharing

8. Organizing

9. Current Awareness

11. Role of the Library/Resources

12. Workshops

14. Frequently used spaces

16. Finding “never felt the need to go to the library... personally”

17. Organizing “Organizing is a challenge because articles can be relevant to more than one grouping” “…know where things are but usually can’t find it” “…organize by deleting articles that are done being used” “If could find the article once...can find it again”

18. CurrentAwareness “I’m not high tech..I keep current more through talking to people” “find it kind of hard to keep current” “papers tend to find you” “as long as doing original stuff … don’t really need to care”

19. Front line service “I can’t find it...I just make peace with that” “if it’s hard to find… then it must not be that important” “if I couldn’t find it...then it must not be that important” “librarians do an awesome job” “didn’t know about the librarian’s help...don’t do a good job marketing self...needs to be obvious from the start”

20. Role of the Library “Physically go to the library to use the bathroom, Starbucks, pick up delivery, otherwise would not step foot in there” “tried to go to the library once. ..it’s like an animal house in there...” “like to go to library but ...undergrads”

21. Library Spaces Describe the various stages in your research/course work and where you physically work in each stage.

23. use physical library as a space

24. two common complaints: noise inability to find a space/reserve a group study room

27. Three categories highlighted types of spaces (aka types of activities they want space to accommodate) amenities/facilities other features/items

29. safe place to leave stuff

30. clean