by Claudine Perrault, Library Director
The results are in. Your feedback will now help us chart a course for the Estes Valley Library’s future.

This summer, we invited you to participate in the Library’s Patron Satisfaction Survey. Building upon previous survey efforts, we asked you to tell us how we’re doing in key service areas—both in levels of importance, and for those using these services, your level of satisfaction.

The Library encouraged participation through its many publicity channels. The results were collected and compiled by the independent firm, Equation Research.

We’re happy to report that the data has been organized and is ready to share.

First—a note on participation. A survey is most informative when many people respond. We received an impressive 796 responses, a very strong sampling for our community size.

A huge thanks goes to many local businesses, who offered participation incentives through randomly-drawn gift baskets. Further gratitude goes to the Library’s Friends & Foundation, which provided funding for the study.

“The Estes Valley Library performs very well across the attributes measured in this study,”reported Equation Research. “A majority of the constituents are satisfied with the library’s performance on all 11 attributes that apply to them.”

Two attributes scored highest: the staff, and the feeling of being welcomed at the Library. We’ll strive to keep both of those attributes strong.

There are opportunities for us to improve. For Teen Services and English Language Learner services, levels of importance ranked above levels of satisfaction, calling for additional attention in the coming years. Financial Literacy results, meanwhile, showed that the level of satisfaction now exceeds the level of importance, indicating we’ve met many existing needs in this area, allowing attention to shift toward online access to these successful training materials.

We received hundreds of open-ended comments, too.  Survey says!  More physical books, digital books, author visits, literary events, programs for young minds, and additional services for lifelong learners.

The survey provided new insights into Library communication channels—asking where you currently receive information about activities, and where you would most prefer to receive information. The biggest trend? eMail. Newspaper articles and the Library website were close behind as preferred sources.

All data collected through the 2017 Survey is vital, and we are now implementing plans to integrate these results into service priorities for 2018. While still fulfilling the objectives in our 2015-2020 Comprehensive Plan, the survey results will help us sharpen the outcomes for those goals through this clarified understanding.

A full summary of the study is available at estesvalleylibrary.org. The report explains the survey’s objectives and methodology, key findings and results, and a profile of respondents.

We thank you for sharing your feedback with us. Everyone at the Library looks forward to responding to this vital information as we continue to provide all the benefits that a village library can offer its community.