SUNCAT Survey Report 2013

We’ve just published the report from our Benefits and Impact Survey for 2013. The survey was launched back in November and closed at the end of last month.

The report confirms SUNCAT’s primary role as a centralised source of serials information and UK holdings, with 75% of responses stating, either locating serials and articles, or checking bibliographic information, as the primary purposes for using the service.

The key features of the service which are most valued by the respondents include:

• SUNCAT’s comprehensive coverage
• Its aggregation and display of serials information and UK holdings
• The accuracy and currency of the data provided
• The speed and ease of use of the service  

We are very happy to see that the vast majority of respondents find SUNCAT not only easy or very easy to use (86%) but that it also saves them time (89%). Further, 97% indicated they would recommend the service to others.

“It is such a comprehensive reference source it would take me much longer to check information elsewhere.”

“SUNCAT is easy to use and its coverage of UK serial holdings is great.”

“Very trustworthy, fast and comprehensive. Records are to a very high standard.”

“Find Suncat invaluable. If it wasn't available I would try to source an alternative. Don't know what though!”

We also used the survey to find out what improvements our users would like to see in SUNCAT so that we can use this information to plan and prioritise our future developments. A number of the suggestions related to the data provided by the SUNCAT Contributing Libraries (CLs), both requesting more detailed holdings information and also providing additional information such as licensing restrictions for electronic serials. While this area is not one EDINA has immediate control over we do take note of these ideas, in the hope that if our CLs start recording and linking such information to their serials records, we would be able to start incorporating this into SUNCAT.

However, with regard to suggested improvements related to the SUNCAT interface we are happy to report that a number of these will be addressed as part of the redevelopment of SUNCAT, announced in November and mentioned in the previous posting. These include:

• Moving the search functionality to the homepage of the service to integrate the service and website more closely
• Providing a print/electronic serials limit to the search functionality to enable users to pre-filter their search by format
• Adding print/electronic icons to the holdings display to enable users to more quickly and easily distinguish between print and electronic holdings  

It is also good to know that our users are keen to see the service continue to expand and we will indeed be continuing to add new libraries throughout 2013.

Additional suggestions, described in the report, were also received and we will be investigating the feasibility of these and where possible adding them to a list of requirements for future development work.

SUNCAT Benefits and Impact Survey Report

The latest SUNCAT Benefits and Impact Survey Report is now available. The report highlights:

- How the service is being used
- How SUNCAT benefits users
- The current level of satisfaction with the service
- How users would like to see SUNCAT develop

Comments from respondents include:

"There are so many search options which you can use, it just makes my job so much easier!"

"If not for Suncat I would spend a lot of my time trying to locate material"

"More than my work taking longer, the quality of my work (catalogue records) would be lower"

"It's easy to use, has a broad scope of materials held, and is very simple to use. I recommend it to students as well as library staff."

For any questions about the report or SUNCAT in general please contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk.

SUNCAT Satisfaction Survey 2010-11

SUNCAT is presently carrying out a User Satisfaction Survey. We are very keen to find out your views on the service. The survey consists of 9 questions and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. We are constantly striving to make SUNCAT even better and so your feedback would be very much valued.

Results of user impact & satisfaction survey

We conducted an impact and satisfaction survey on SUNCAT in April 2009. The majority of the respondents were library or information professionals but there were also responses from a small number of researchers, lecturing staff and postgraduates.

Responses confirmed SUNCAT’s primary purpose as a serials location tool with around two thirds of the respondents using the service to find where specific serials are held in the UK. Other purposes included:

• Checking if specific titles are held in particular libraries, cities or regions
• Checking the bibliographic details of serials
• Using SUNCAT records to improve or create local library serials’ records

Specific examples of usage also highlighted that SUNCAT regularly saved library staff time and money when trying to locate serials.

“SUNCAT is invaluable in helping me locate libraries that hold journals when British Library is unable to satisfy ILL requests. SUNCAT is my first choice for serials location checking. It is easy to use and has exceptional coverage. I use it daily to trace journals and correct reference information. It has speeded my work up tremendously since it's introduction and I'd be lost without it.”

Desirable improvements or developments for the service which were highlighted included:

• Addition of more contributing libraries
• Reduction of duplication on the catalogue
• Linking from records on SUNCAT to equivalent records on libraries’ local catalogues
• Linking from SUNCAT records to Table of Contents services, e.g. Zetoc

Potential Web 2.0 developments received little support from the respondents but there was interest in personalisation features. The most popular of these were:

• Saving records across sessions
• Saving searches across sessions
• Location based results based on users’ preference settings.

A number of these improvements are already in development. The team are gradually catching up with adding a backlog of new libraries data to the catalogue and hope to add more new libraries in the near future. Linking SUNCAT records to Table of Contents services is currently in development as part of the Discovery to Delivery project and location-based searching on SUNCAT is also being investigated as part of the JISC IE Personalisation project .

Finally, 92% of respondents indicated their overall level of satisfaction with SUNCAT as “Good” or “Excellent”.

This is excellent news for the SUNCAT service, with high levels of satisfaction for the existing service and positive support for developments in progress. The team realise, however, that there is still much work to be done to try and ameliorate the effects of duplicate records on the catalogue while also adding more new libraries to further improve the coverage and value of the service.

Complete SUNCAT survey and win £50 of Amazon vouchers

We would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete a SUNCAT satisfaction survey at https://www.survey.ed.ac.uk/suncatsurvey

The aims of the survey are to discover how SUNCAT is being used, its impact on users' work and research, and the current level of satisfaction with the service. The results of the survey will help the SUNCAT team to identify and prioritise improvements and future developments for the service.

The survey will be available until Friday 10th April, when completed surveys will be entered into a draw for £50 of Amazon vouchers.

We would be grateful for your comments and would also encourage you to circulate the survey details as widely as possible, both to library staff and users.

Thanks in advance!