The College Student Experience Questionnaire was a study conducted by the MIT Planning Office in the fall of 1996. 507 students responded, representing 11% of the undergraduate student body, fairly evenly distibuted over the four classes.

Under the heading "library experiences," students were asked how frequently they used the libraries, in 10 different capacities.

Although 83% of the students had used Barton at some point in their time at MIT (the activity with the highest positive response), approximately half the students had never checked out a book or used reference or reserve material (though these may not be the same half).

It should also be noted that 1/4 of the students surveyed were first-year students, and had only been at MIT for a few months at the time of the survey.

The services were as follows, from most to least used (total percent who have used the service, followed by those who have used it often):

	total % used	% who used it often
used Barton	83%	30%
study space	77	28
bibliographic work	68	22
reserves/reference	67	16 (I suspect the majority used reserves)
checked out books	54	15
sought librarian	50	6
browsing	46	11
checked citations	46	12
used indices	38	8
read references	37	8

--Karen Mueller-Harder

As part of the Libraries' Information Services Study done in 1992, a number of faculty and researchers in three fields were interviewed about their research habits and needs. As part of these interviews, they were asked what an ideal library/information system in their field would be like, and by what means the libraries or I/S could provide them with better or additional services.

The most frequent comments were the following:

• I want an online indexing system I can use at my home or office which
  - can use keywords intelligently
  - includes abstracts/information on type of study
  - links to full-text articles which can then be printed out
  
• I want a library near my office, especially for browsing journals (both current issues and older volumes).
• I want a good selection of journals, in alphabetic order, so I don't have to use the computer to find them. I want the older volumes in the same place.
• I want knowledgeable reference librarians (most felt that this was already the case, but definitely wanted it in their future library).
• I want to know what the library services and capabilities are-- I have the feeling there's a lot available now which I don't even know about.
• I want to be able to do my own searching and research, using online tools which are easy-to-use.

Some "extra" services people said they'd like, and often stated at the same time that they'd be perfectly willing to pay extra for (these were mentioned by fewer people than the above list):

• I'd like to be notified when latest issues of certain journal arrive.
• I'd like the table of contents of these photocopied and sent to me.
• I'd like to be notified of arrival of new books in my field.
• I'd like (paper) document delivery service to my office.
• I'd like to be able to buy a day of someone's time who's an expert in research in my field (every few months), to do some in-depth searching, and to see what's out there which I may be missing.

And a few items suggested by only one person each:

• quiet place to study
• 24-hour access (not clear if they meant physical or virtual)
• better copier
• 2-sided copying
• acid-free paper available for copying onto
• arrange service to de-acidify faculty books (at low cost)
• have one centralized library (for efficiency)
  and
  
• hold sherry hour to bring in faculty into library