Library Assessment with a Suggestion Box

Cecile M. Farnum, Catherine Baird, Kathryn Ball, “Can I Make a Suggestion? Your Library’s Suggestion Box as an Assessment and Marketing Tool,” Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 6:1 (2011): 1-21.

An assessment tool that many libraries make use of is the suggestion box. In this paper, the authors describe their study of how suggestion boxes were used in academic libraries, how they’re managed, and whether the feedback they get from those suggestion boxes were used in planning or decision making.

They conducted a survey of Canadian academic libraries and found that libraries use both online and physical suggestion boxes. Of the twenty-five responding libraries, 96 percent of them use a suggestion box in some form. Most of the libraries respond to at least some of the suggestions that were made, however, most could not say whether the suggestions were used for decision-making in any way. They found that libraries were more likely to do so if the suggestion box was on their homepage or if they posted responses to suggestions publicly.

Suggestions boxes are often used to submit complaints. The authors encourage readers to think of complaints in a more positive way; they can be used to help the organization improve its services. They suggest a number of ways to improve the suggestions received: information should be gathered regarding the category of complaint, demographic data, library information, and ranking information about the importance or level of annoyance of the complaint.

The authors also suggest that libraries assess how they deal with complaints and encouraged them to increase their response rate, take action to resolve issues, and tailor their responses to be “warm.” By this they mean, for example, not simply citing a policy in response to a complaint, but recognizing that something might be bothersome or inconvenient, and promising to review the policy.

This article provides readers with an understanding of how suggestion boxes are used at academic libraries as well as a lot of good ideas for how the use of a suggestion box could be improved and used as a public relations or marketing tool.

I’ve been thinking about how a suggestion box could be used to improve the work of technical services and library systems. Our customers are not only the faculty, staff, and students of our university, but also the librarians and other staff that work in other parts of the library. Is there a way for them to provide anonymous suggestions to us, to improve the services that we offer? Or would it be better to use another approach to gather their information, like a customer service survey or focus groups?