ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries May 1989 / 371 ever, has written his thanks to each person for the 198 postcards of lib raries w hich he received. Twenty-four of the cards were of interiors, with the most exquisite gift being ten photocards of the Sterling L ib rary at Yale University from Gay Walker, curator of the arts of the Book (see Fig. 1 for one of the more active and probably the inner­ most of the cards: the fountain in the Yale Librari­ an’s Courtyard). She and the other donors are also thanked publicly for their largess w ith such gems as the “Nyack Public Library, Nyack on the Hudson, New York,” framed in living color with lovely blue forget-me-nots; and the “Rosenberg Day, Rosen­ berg L ibrary, Galveston, Texas” postcard w ith many citizens and their children proudly posed in front of the building. Public thanks are also grate­ fully extended to two continuing donors of many postals: Frederick D uda and James Davis. Second plea As announcers on radio programs continually re­ peat: “Keep those cards and letters coming!” The author asks for more. He received cards and letters from old and new friends along with library post­ cards. He continues to welcome postcards (aca­ dem ic interior or exterior), questions and com­ ments mailed to him at the Kuhn L ibrary and Gallery, UMBC, Baltimore, MD 21228. He again promises to send you a library postcard in return, but probably not an interior. ■ ■ INNOVATIONS Student pre-surveys as bibliographic instruction tools By Tony Amodeo Bibliographic Instruction Coordinator Loyola M arymount University It happens again and again to every BI librarian- lecturer: “W ho is my audience? To whom am I talking?” You are called in on relatively short notice—yes, policy says “two weeks advance no­ tice,” but when your mission is to reach as many students as possible, you almost always give in. You know you will be faced w ith a jumble of lower and upper division students, some of whom have had the orientation tour, the freshman library lecture, and perhaps one or two presentations in their other classes, some of whom have not known there was a library on campus—or so it seems. You try to pump the teacher for information, but this one is the type that is almost never reachable on campus, and who sends a student assistant w ith a scribbled note that they w ant a library lecture on the day they will be in Fredericton, N.B., for a conference. At such moments, a good solution may be to hand to the student assistant a stack of short but well thought-out survey forms to be given to the class, filled out, collected and sent to you by the teacher or the assistant. Such a form can be of help in a num ber of ways. W ith a little thought, the survey can w arm up the class to a library lecture. It can let them identify some of the issues you will address, and some as­ pects of the library to begin thinking about. A sur­ vey can request feedback on problems encountered in the library, employing a list of possible problems to be ticked off, plus room for comments and sug­ gestions. It can also solicit their expectations and their “wish-lists” regarding the material to be cov­ ered, which can be very helpful in designing the lecture for this specific audience. Answers from the survey can tell you a lot about the level of library understanding in the class, e. g ., w hether or not the students have had previous lec­ tures, a tour, or no presentation at all; w hat level of 372 / C&R L News lib ra ry experien ce/u n d erstan d in g th e students have, as well as the major areas of insecurity or concern for individual students. Survey answers can also tell you, directly or indi­ rectly, some useful things about your library. For example, if students can’t find the reference desk, is signage adequate? Should there be a better m ap of the library? If students feel ignored even if they ask for help, is overall service w h at it should be? Are student assistants misdirecting people? Are there some personnel who are less th an helpful? Should instructions for autom ated equipm ent, the cata­ log, individual service locations be more clear? In an anonymous survey, students often tell you m ore th a n you asked to know; comments often come more from personal feelings and individual experiences th an as a direct answer to your survey questions. You may also begin to identify faculty who give the library short shrift or bad press, since students often absorb teachers’ peeves and biases by osmosis. Such evidence can be useful in spurring some action on the p a rt of the library to address faculty problems—or problem faculty. Sometimes a simple update will do; sometimes re-education m ay be necessary, especially for some who have not gotten any of your library’s dust on their feet since the last revision of their lecture notes tw enty years ago. Careful w riting of the survey can give forth sta­ tistics useful to the BI program , and to the library as a whole. If a com puter program were w ritten to correlate elements of the individual survey forms, good statistical evidence supporting a BI program m ight emerge. For example, the num ber and type of problems encountered could be correlated to the num ber, level, or absence of previous BI lectures or tours; student level might be correlated w ith a tti­ tude, evaluation of lectures, or type of problems encountered. [If anyone has, and is willing to share such a com puter program , please let m e—and the editor of C &R L N ew s— know!] O f course, anonymous surveys and evaluations have th e ir draw backs; some students w ill tell things on an anonymous w ritten form th at they would never tell in person—which obviously has its repercussions in the form of spurious, comic, or de­ viant comments. But sometimes students have cre­ a tiv e insights t h a t can c u t th ro u g h acad em ic insulation—and th at fog of professional prejudice- by-habit. Best of all, using a survey’s results at the begin­ ning of your lecture is a good w ay to gain confi­ dence (you’re not coming at them cold); to get a t­ tention; to give the class the feeling (one would hope, based in reality) th a t you care about their in­ dividual problems; and to keep them listening for the solution to the problem they w rote about— w hich your talk probably would have addressed in any case, but which now is perceptively tailored to your audience as individuals. Innovative use of in-house current awareness profiles as a guide for collection development in a pharmaceutical library By Daniel T. Law Senior Inform ation Specialist Sm ith Kline & French Laboratories, King o f Prussia, Pa. If th e basic tenor of collection developm ent (CD) is the identification and procurem ent of re­ sources in support of current and anticipated p a­ tron needs, then it becomes the prim ary responsi­ bility of the CD librarian to first assess those needs, and then to select and acquire resources for the meeting of those needs. However, CD librarians are often m et w ith distrust, particularly from fac­ ulty colleagues who often are mildly suspicious of their qualifications as “book selectors” (“Are they really qualified?”) , or their “methods of selection” (“How do they choose their books anyway?”) . The problem stems largely from the imprecise nature of their work. G ranted, CD is not an exact science; but it need not become an entirely subjective and arbitrary undertaking either. Perhaps w hat is needed is a heightened aw are­ ness on the p art of collection developers to p u t CD on a more objective and “scientific” foundation. Such a feat is not as impossible as it m ay appear. Collection development has at least two attributes which qualify it as “scientific.” They are: control­ lability and quantifiability. Collection develop­ m ent is controllable, to the extent th at its activities can be efficiently directed towards the attainm ent of desired objectives.1 It is quantifiable, because L. Ackoff, et al., Scientific Method: O pti­ m izing A p p lied Research Decisions (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962), 3.