Dear

Thank you for agreeing to see us tomorrow (9th May). We will find our way to the Staff Common Room (hopefully) for 12.30pm.

I hope this information will make it a little clearer what the project is hoping to achieve and how you can help us - Our project is a JISC-commissioned study of the use of electronic information resources in UK higher education institutions, and we are trying to cover the whole spectrum of academic disciplines across the institutions studied (3 in Wales). We hope that you will be able to facilitate access to students in your department for the distribution of questionnaires, and also to 'round-up' 5 students for personal interviews. We are looking at two possible methods of distribution for the questionnaires - either via e-mail (if students' e-mail addresses are available) or by paper copies, but whichever method is used, we would appreciate your support in encouraging the students to respond. We will be happy to tell you more when we meet you, but if you want any further information, the web site for the project is http://www.dil.aber.ac.uk/DIS/Research/Justeis/JISCTop.htm

Thanks, see you tomorrow.

**************************************************************

Dear

Thanks for talking with me over the phone this morning. Just to recap, what we are asking of you is to find us 1 "electronic information-friendly" lecturer each from 3 departments (preferably History, Education and Sports Studies, but anywhere else, if those don't work out), who would be willing to cooperate in our JISC-commissioned study of the use of electronic information resources in UK HEIs. (We are actually looking for 2 departments per institution, but are going for 3 now, to have one spare.) We are not going for similar departments at each institution, but across the 3 institutions in the sample we hope to cover the whole spectrum of academic disciplines.

The Web site for the project is at URL http://www.dil.aber.ac.uk/DIS/Research/Justeis/JISCTop.htm

We will be asking the lecturers to facilitate access to students in their departments.

This will entail a couple of meetings with project staff, distributing questionnaires to students (and encouraging them to respond), and also rounding up about 5 of them for personal interviews. In addition to the 5 personal student interviews, we will be distributing about 1,000 e-mail questionnaires (spread across the 6 departments in 3 institutions, not 1,000 per institution!), and we might need help from them in gathering e-mail addresses or otherwise distributing the questionnaires. The extent of their involvement in distributing the e-mail questionnaires depends largely on how accessible student e-mail addresses are to us. We've found that some institutions will quite happily supply us with a photocopied list of student names and e-mail addresses (or even have them posted on the WWW); others will do mass e-mailing for us, but can't give out the addresses; others are unwilling or unable to help at all because of the way their institution or department treats the privacy legislation. On that score, are you able to tell me what the Trinity policy is on giving out student e-mail addresses?

Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Yours sincerely,

The research work involves interviewing a sample of students and staff at HE institutions throughout the UK, ensuring that the sampling frame includes a range of types of departments, disciplines, staff (academic and academic-related) and students. The aim is to inform JISC about likely trends in usage of electronic information services of all varieties.

Your institution and department have been randomly selected for this exercise, and we hope that you will be able to co-operate with us. We would like you to attend a short face-to-face interview during the week (date supplied) at a venue to be decided. [NB version for staff replaces previous sentence with: We would like you to take part in a telephone interview during the week (date supplied)]. Those people agreeing to be interviewed will be entered for a small prize draw at the end of the exercise. Interviews will be no longer than 20 minutes and all information will be treated strictly confidentially - no institution, department or individual will be identified in the results as JISC are only concerned with overall trends of system use.

If you would be interested in taking part in this exercise please contact, as soon as possible:

Christine Urquhart
email: cju@aber.ac.uk
tel: 01970 622162
fax: 01970 622190
Department of Information & Library Studies
University of Wales
Llanbadarn Fawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 3AS

3 Dec. 1999

This research project is being conducted on behalf of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, and your department has given us permission to survey a small sample of staff and students.

We are surveying patterns of use of electronic information services by students, academics and librarians across all sectors and disciplines within Higher Education in the UK, in order to inform JISC about likely trends in the use of electronic information services of all varieties.

A sample of different types of university and, within them, departments representing various academic disciplines, has been chosen at random. Within your department you have also been chosen at random for interview.

All the information you give us will be treated confidentially; no individuals, departments or universities will be identified in our results and we will report only overall trends and statistics.

• what did you do with the information? Will it have another use later on? e.g. use in research paper, lecture, assignment, dissertation etc.

Questionnaire on Your Use of Electronic Information Services by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils

The JUSTEIS Project

Many of you will remember that in January this project was trying to organise interviews with you and the other students who are now receiving this questionnaire. If you were interviewed, please read no further and do not fill in a questionnaire. If we failed to agree a time or to meet you for some reason, please _DO_ fill in this questionnaire and send it back to cju@aber.ac.uk.

If you reply with a complete questionnaire you will be entered in the music token prize draw automatically.

The project is surveying patterns of use of electronic information services by students, academics and librarians across all sectors and disciplines within Higher Education in the UK. It is important to gather this information so that appropriate services can continue to be supplied to you. The questionnaire will only take a few minutes. So PLEASE DO FILL IT IN and RETURN IT! (variation in font used for last sentence to embolden some text instructions for postal questionnaires)

Firstly, please think back to an occasion during the last week or so when you needed to find information that you personally did not have, and which involved you using a computer. (The need may have been personal or academic, as simple as you like, and may have required the use of anything from the Internet to CD-ROMs, databases, e-mail, online texts, etc.) (variation for postal questionnaires: paragraph in bold text)

Now please answer the following questions (place an "X" between the "[ ]" or type an answer):

1. Was the information search for:

assignment for course [ ]

background reading/research [ ]

preparation for project or

field work [ ]

dissertation or thesis [ ]

a paper or report [ ]

bibliography, reference

checking [ ]

exam or test revision [ ]

seminar or class presentation [ ]

proposal for research

or project [ ]

job search or application [ ]

planning some activity [ ]

online shopping [ ]

someone else - you did the

search for them [ ]

2. What resources did you use?

Please give as many details as you can about the electronic sources you used. These may have been email, CD-ROM, the library catalogue, the Internet (and which search engine, for example?) or other databases.

3. What led you to this resource?

Lecturer/tutor suggestion [ ]

Another student [ ]

Read about it [ ]

Library induction/course [ ]

Library staff advice [ ]

Other [ ]

4. Did you find the information you wanted?

yes [ ]

or no [ ]

or some [ ]

5. Was this a normal or usual kind of search for you?

yes [ ]

or no [ ]

6. Please list other kinds of electronic information resources which you use from time to time - have you any favourites?

Finally please let us know:

7. Are you male [ ]

female [ ]

8. Are you under 20 [ ]

20-29 [ ]

30-39 [ ]

40-49 [ ]

50-59 [ ]

60 and over [ ]

9. What is your department?

10. What is your first language?

11. Do you have any special needs? (e.g dyslexia or hearing difficulties) yes [ ]

no [ ]

12. Do you have access to a networked computer in the department?

yes [ ]

no [ ]

Do you have access to a networked computer from your term-time address?

yes [ ]

no [ ]

If yes, is this a university connection [ ]

Or your own Internet service provider [ ]

13. Are you

full-time [ ]

or part-time [ ]

or a distance learner [ ]

14. Do you live: on campus [ ]

off campus [ ]

15. Are you post-graduate [ ]

Is this a taught course [ ]

or by research [ ]

16. Are you undergraduate [ ]

What year:

1 [ ] or 2 [ ] or 3 [ ] or 4 [ ] or 5 [ ]

17. What is your degree subject?

Many thanks for your time. No information you have included will be linked with you or to the institution.

Good luck with your course.

You will be entered for the prize draw for a music voucher.

PLEASE RETURN TO: cju@aber.ac.uk
Christine Urquhart
DIS, Dept. Information Studies
University of Wales Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3AS
UK
tel. 01970-622162
fax 01970-622190, email cju@aber.ac.uk

1. What do you perceive to be the main benefits to users of electronic information services? (May need to indicate electronic journals, access to databases, datasets and may need to differentiate between staff and students)
2. Are there any drawbacks as far as the users are concerned?
3. Can you give me some idea of some of the current concerns you have? Are there changes in your environment/HE institution which may affect your ability to plan effectively for EIS?
4. Do you have any special arrangements for departmental libraries, remote campuses or distance learning students – or other students not on site for a good proportion of their course?
5. (Moving on to management issues) What are some of the management implications of these electronic information services – could we cover the ways you have had to make staffing changes to cope with service changes?
6. How do you go about the organisation, development and maintenance of the Web site?
7. How do you deal with the licensing issues (print/electronic bundling, long-term vs short term agreements?) What about collaborative arrangements with other HE institutions – how do you feel this works – or could work?
8. Has the advent of EIS affected your existing arrangements for departmental allocations, for example (or departmental contributions)?
9. If there are several routes to obtaining an EIS – how do you choose amongst these? (basis of service provider, bundling with existing services – or random choice?).
10. How do you, for example, choose between the various NESLI deals on offer? ( is there a formal collection development strategy?)
11. Are subject based deals of more interest to you than publisher based deals? (particularly with a view to charging departments, for example?).
12. How do you view the future of electronic journals for you? How do you manage the e-journals in relation to the existing periodicals functions?
13. How does use of e-journals and EIS affect the way printing / photocopying services are organised – and financed? Have you any evidence for preferences of users for table of contents/abstracts versus full text?
14. How do you obtain feedback on usage of EIS? How effective do you judge your provision of EIS to be? How would you expect to assess the performance of the services?

One route for reducing journal subscription costs might be for authors to pay for submission (page costs). How might this affect your institution?