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Reports methodology and findings of focus groups conducted at Utah state university to assess students’ needs in the library’s new information commons.

A joint committee of computer services personnel and librarians, with assistance from undergraduate library peer mentors, undertook a series of focus groups with participants from the Utah state university student population. The goals were to assess the undiscovered needs of students and students’ preferences in a new library.

After the focus group responses were organized into eleven categories, we recorded several key traits and sets of comments from our user population; our users spend a good deal of their study time in the library either working individually or as a group, participants differ in their preferences for seeking help in the library, and participants consider noise levels and adequate space to study important concerns.

By following a few standard procedures, focus groups can be a useful format for collecting data regarding patrons’ needs and interests in the library. Focus groups can help library staff plan for and design new intellectual and physical spaces in the library.

This paper will be useful to academic librarians planning an Information Commons or other services in the library, or librarians interested in assessing their users’ needs through focus groups.

The purpose of this paper if to design a workshop that effectively facilitates the collaborative revision of student learning outcomes based on current research relating to competencies in information literacy (IL).

This case study describes collaborations between librarians and writing instructors throughout an eight-week workshop. The workshop focused on using the results of assessments to revise learning outcomes and restructure instruction practices to help students in the areas they struggle with the most. Three significant frameworks, including threshold concepts, backward design and decoding the disciplines, were used to facilitate effective discussion and revise learning outcomes.

The structure of the workshop based on three key frameworks stimulated innovation, fostered collegiality, prompted future collaborative opportunities and garnered buy-in for the importance and implementation of IL initiatives. This collaboration served as a pilot workshop for future plans to write and revise IL outcomes with other departments across campus.

This study can serve as a model for future collaborations with any department faculty, especially when IL learning outcomes need to be articulated or revised. The frameworks described are particularly helpful for guiding this process.

While much is written on librarian collaborations, this case study emphasizes the importance of creating even closer collaborative opportunities that place both non-library faculty and teaching librarians on equal footing, allowing everyone in the workshop to take part in the design and implementation of integrating IL into a program. It also gives concrete ways to use threshold concepts to discuss IL issues with faculty, which is a major focus of the newly drafted Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.