UC Berkeley

Focus groups are an effective way of solciting student and faculty impressions of library directions, services, and collections. They can be used as part of library strategic planning or to reevaluate services in the face of budget cuts and downsizing. In this article the authors provide a brief overview of focus groups; discuss the use of undergraduate focus groups on two campuses of the University of California library system; describe the methodologies used to conduct them and the conclusions drawn from the results of the interviews; online actions taken as an outcome of the focus group discussions; and describe new directions the libraries were led in as a result of student input.