Interviews .1 Purpose

A major aim of this research is that of outlining the level of satisfaction of our patrons as concerns the consortia service called “Emeroteca Virtuale”, which is the main gateway to most of the online journals available at our campus.

However, other online resources are available and it is also important to understand if a unique access to all available e-journals is expected.

For these reasons, it was decided to carry on a series of qualitative face-to-face interviews with staff, students, teachers and researchers from the departments belonging to the different libraries at our campus (see appendix 3).

The interviews intended to:

• Explore which are the preferred ways of searching an online article

• Explore whether or not the Emeroteca Virtuale satisfies all researchers’ needs

• Understand whether students and researchers would prefer a particular kind of access to e-journals

• Define the reasons why researchers use the “Emeroteca Virtuale” and why not 4.2.3.2 Advantages for this research

The most important aim of the qualitative interview is to understand the perspective of the analysed subject, that is understanding how the interviewed people see the world, trying to get their terminology and the complexity of their individual perceptions and experiences [Piergiorgio Corbetta, 2003].

For this research in particular, it was very important to define the level of general satisfaction of the university patrons as concerns the library consortia services. So, it was necessary not only to gather data about patrons, but we also needed to let them talk, so that they could tell us about their search habits, their preferences and feelings.

4.2.3.3 Limitations for this research

In a way, we can say that the kind of immersion of the researcher into the social reality through the interview is not so deep like in the case of the participant observation.

In fact, though we could get some information about personal opinions and feelings, the interview did not give us a clear idea of what were, for instance, the practical difficulties in using a tool like the Emeroteca Virtuale. Furthermore, the selected sample is not representative of the entire population that is being studied.

That’s why this method was used in combination with observations and questionnaires.

4.2.3.4 Sample selection

Interviews scheduled for this research considered the definition of a sample of key informants and the clarity and precision of simple questions. The sample was made of twelve students, two teachers, two researchers and four people from staff, making a total of 20 people interviewed.

People for the interview were not selected on the basis that they were particularly representative of the population, but just because they were considered “interesting customers”. The idea of customer included mainly researchers and students, but also teachers and staff.

In particular, the researcher considered those people among staff that have an evident positive attitude towards the new technology and the reason is also that today, in the changing process that affects libraries, the researcher thinks that the library staff should be more and more involved in research programs and activities dealing with the new evolving digital scenario. This also implies the need to make research and to be always updated.

Undergraduate and graduating students were considered because they often use e-journals and have demonstrated to be very interested in some tutorials that the library system has organized on the use of e-journals at our campus. Finally, teachers and researchers were considered because it often happens that this category makes a lot of complaints about e-journals.

4.2.3.5 Design of the interview

At first, it was necessary to define, in broader terms, what to ask. For the purposes of this research, it was considered important to focus on questions where the response is not pre-determined, but chosen by the respondent and expressed in natural language.

In fact, the most difficult task in qualitative interviews is to make people talk. It was also very important to consider that the interviewer, while making his interview, did not have to express any kind of approval or disapproval with respect to the opinions expressed by the interviewed person [B. S. Phillips, 1971].

To summarize, the design of the interview was the following:

Preliminary explanations of the research when possible interviewees were contacted, trying to make them understand what they were asked for

Different forms of questions: descriptive, structural and probing

A general layout of interview questionnaires but not a restrictive one, since it was decided to make a non-structured interview, in which the interviewed person is free to talk, while the interviewer has a path to follow concerning the arguments that must be

A particular attention to language, so that both the actors of the interview can easily understand each other [R.L Kahn and C.F Cannel, 1967]

A pilot, that is a very small-scale trial before the main investigation A 30 minutes-time per interview

As regards users’ satisfaction, particularly interesting is the expectation survey proposed by the University of Waikatoo [Nicola Harwood and Jillene Bydder, 1998].

4.2.3.6 Defining questions

The interview questionnaire [M.Q. Patton, 1990] has taken into consideration, as far as possible, the following kind of open-ended questions:

• Experience/behaviour questions, which ask about people’s activities

• Opinion/value questions, which cover beliefs, for ex. “What do you think about?”

• Feeling questions, which say more about a person’s emotions

• Knowledge questions, which seek factual knowledge about a particular topic

• Sensory questions, which allow the researcher to step into the respondent’s shoes, for ex. “What do you notice first when you access the Library System website?”

• Background/demographic questions

In particular, the themes of the proposed questions mainly regarded:

Users’ profession

Users’ opinion about the EV

Use of full-text articles provided by the EV Frequency of use

Reasons for using or not using the EV

Satisfaction about the services provided by the EV

4.2.3.7 Analysis

The qualitative analysis was case-based, since the main objective was to deeply “understand”

the interviewed people. Results, in this case, are presented in a narrative way, using the same words of the interviewed people and trying not to alter the data which have been gathered.

Results are reported in chapter five.

4.2.4 The questionnaire