June 11

Research
Report 2008
Great Bear Group
Issues
Võ Lê Duy
Lê Minh Hả i
BA060087
BA060089
Regarding
Đỗ Nguyễ n Tuấ n Khôi
Nguyễ n Thụ y Anh Thư
BA060095
BA060104
International
Nguyễ n Thị Kim Thả o BA060105 University’s
Tôn Thấ t Huệ Trí BA060113
Library
 Research Report
Issues Regarding International University’s Library
[Abstract]

The report is based on the academic year 2007-2008 data collection from students
from IU. The survey asks students about their satisfaction, their opinion about the
shortcomings of IU’s library. In the last section, we also collect student’s ideas to
improve our school’s library and make it better off.

We carried out the survey to students from 4 faculty and 4 years so as to give the most
comprehensive results in our group ability. All the collected survey data was record to
statistical figures. In the finding section of the research report, we analyze these
figures into details in order to give a common sense about our school’s library.
Contents

I. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1
II. Methodology ............................................................................................................... 2
Sample............................................................................................................................. 2
Data Analysis ................................................................................................................... 2
III. Detailed Finding ....................................................................................................... 3
IV. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 8
References ........................................................................................................................... 9
 Introduction 1

Research Methods for Businesses

Practice Project
“Issues Regarding International University’s Library”

I. Introduction

Libraries are the heart of any university in the world because of its necessity for students’
learning and researching as well as lecturers’ teaching. Libraries do not only provide
literacy and artistic materials but also a tranquil place for studying. In reality, not all
universities, in particular, International University (IU), have an ideal library to support
students in their learning and lecturers’ researching.

International University, is a member of Ho Chi Minh City National University, was

established in 2003. At the beginning year, the university has 250 students, until now it has
more over 3000 students. With that development, the university is continuous raising the
standard of teaching methods and material facilities to support for students. But there are
still remain some shortcomings that lead to the number of students who come to IU’s
library have become less and less. Thus it has turned out to be an issue for IU’s staffs and
people who have responsibility to overcome. A question emerged in this situation is “Why
does IU’s library not work effectively?”
The most important factor for an ideal library is its resources including academic books and
periodicals for reading, referencing and researching. Moreover, to catch with the changes of
the world, the books and helpful magazines are updated regularly but IU’s library does not
have. There is a huge shortage of material that supports students in their research. In IU’s
library, almost they are the books for some subjects that students already has. Furthermore,
students are not allowed to borrow books so they have to deal with many inconveniences.
This problem should be concerned the most to IU’s library come up to the international
standard as its name.
The second issue is the studying condition, the facility and area in library is not enough for
students. When learning in IU, students usually have presentations and do research in
group. However, the space in the library is not suitable for group working. In addition, IU’s
library does not have the private area for self-study.
The last, but not least, important issue is the librarians’ role. Librarians are expected to be
the stimulation that encourages students to come to the library. Hence, they should be
friendly people who are willing to help students in using the facility whenever they meet
difficulty. Nevertheless, in fact, IU’s librarians do not appear to be friendly and eager to help.
Besides that, they are not skillful, the arrangement in IU’s library is not logical although the
amounts of books are not much.
The goal of this research is to improve the library in order to make it become an ideal place
for students as well as lecturers.

IU’s Library Research Project

 Methodology 2

Based on the concerned problems, this research is formulated towards the following
objectives:
Clarify the problems.
Improve the standard of the library.
Encourage more students and lecturers come to study and research.
This study confines itself in the IU’s library. The goal of this research is to improve the
library in order to make it become an ideal place for students as well as lecturers.
Based on the concerned problems, this research is formulated towards the following
objectives:
Clarify the problems.
Improve the standard of the library.
Encourage more students and lecturers come to study and research.
This study confines itself in the IU’s library.

II. Methodology

This is an e-survey1 which is directly sent to IUers by four ways including Yahoo!
Messenger, email, blog and website2.

This survey is organized with 22 satisfaction questions measured on 5 point and 7 point
scales. Basically, the questions record the degree to which IUers is not satisfied in Library.
Additionally, these questions figure out how necessary the need of IU's library improvement
is. A final open question is conduct to collect more information about what IUers actually
need to better the IU's library.

Sample
This survey is conducted on 85 IU's students who directly use and rate the quality of IU's
library. Within two days of conducting survey, 40 percent of the IU's students who was
surveyed, gave the feedback without any incentive. Nothing distinguishes the respondents
and no respondents.

Data Analysis
The data was launched and collected entirely by computer through internet. Additionally,
the data was accurately computed by the SPSS software and some supporting tools of
Microsoft Office. The validity of data analysis is completely unimpeachable.

1
A questionnaire that is hosted, and completed, online.
2
Survey web page http://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_81Umb9pwwKEy9zS&SVID=Prod

IU’s Library Research Project

 Detailed Finding 3

III. Detailed Finding

According to the survey observed about IU’s library with over 85 students, we have some
specific data through some questions of survey. This survey about IU’s library includes 3
main matters:

1. Material facilities.

2. Books.

3. Librarian’s behaviors.

In the analyzed data with over 85 students, the majority of students are divided equally for
branches and years.

Which majors do you belong to?

# Answer Response %
1 BA 28 33%
2 IT 25 29%
3 EE 16 19%
4 BT 16 19%
Total 85 100%

With above figure board, BA students occupy 33% of total survey students. When the
certain students are chosen accidentally from many branches, probably that BA students
come in library with the great amount. Those figures may not be closed 100% with reality
but with the level of belief if pretty high. Because books in library are serviced for BA
students much more than others branches and many activities like reading books and
meeting groups are also.

Which year are you in?

# Answer Response %
5 First 10 12%
6 Second 45 54%
7 Third 15 18%
8 Fourth 13 16%
Total 83 100%

This above figure board shows how many students of each year use the IU’s library.

IU’s Library Research Project

 Detailed Finding 4

According to this board, the 2nd students occupy approximately 54% in total
students are surveyed. What the above figures say? Why the 2nd students take possession of
percent like that? We can explain as the objective opinion. The 3rd and 4th students in IU
have less than others years because of the exchanged and associated programs. On the
other hand, there are still many subjective reasons that make them go to library rarely. With
some subjects require the group skills and references, so the 2nd students go there more
often. Of course, library is the best place for discussing. The 1st students are not acquainted
with studying in library so they have a little quantity in this.

We ask them some questions in this survey to get their opinions, thoughts and
feeling about the IU’s library. These questions affect directly to the survey and explain
clearly about why less IU students comes IU’s library.

In this survey, there are 83 answers for the question “Do you think library is a good
environment to study?”

# Answer Response %
1 Strongly Agree 7 8%
2 Agree 35 42%
Neither Agree nor
3 23 28%
Disagree
4 Disagree 14 17%
5 Strongly Disagree 4 5%
Total 83 100%

Everyone even agrees with the idea that IU’s library is the great environment for studying
[occupied more than 50%]. It‘s use-friendly for reading books, finding documents,
individually or group learning. Especially, it also has internet to service for studying.

And other question was asked in this survey is “What do you do to the library for?”

IU’s Library Research Project

 Detailed Finding 5

When asked about the purposes of going to library of students, they answered with 3
principle marks:

+ Individual study

+ Group study

+ Reading book

# Question Regularly Sometimes Rarely Responses Mean

1 Individual study 15 33 30 78 2.19
2 Group study 14 44 24 82 2.12
3 Reading book 8 17 51 76 2.57

Statistic Individual study Group study Reading book

Mean 2.19 2.12 2.57
Variance 0.55 0.45 0.46
Standard Deviation 0.74 0.67 0.68
Total Responses 78 82 76

Belongs to be figure table, to know how often they go to library for above purposes.

About the regular coming to library, students go there mainly for individual study. Reading
books are the good way. But rarely do students do.

Group study play much more percent of role in the purposes of students when coming to
library.

Addition to this problem, 85 students in the survey was asked “How often do you go to
IU’s library?” We got the data from this question, following below pie chart:

IU’s Library Research Project

 Detailed Finding 6

According to this pie chart, we can explain more exactly why the IU students rarely come
the library. The students who regularly come here for their purposes just occupy 13.5 %
[involve daily and 2-3 times a week]. It’s really small percentage of all of students who are
studying in IU. Most the IU students just use the library just 1-3 times a month. It’s the
reason why we conduct this survey to explain where the problems came from. Of course,
the students’ feelings and thoughts about IU’s library are very important to interpret this
big problem.

This below shows how they feel about some factors of IU library:

Very Neither Good Very

# Question Good Bad Responses Mean
Good nor Bad Bad
1 Position 4 45 24 10 1 84 16.51
2 Area 2 26 28 24 3 83 17.00
3 Quiet / Noise 3 14 29 23 12 81 17.33
4 Quantity of books 3 15 24 33 7 82 17.32
5 Quality of books 3 26 31 15 6 81 16.94
Arrangement of
6 1 16 31 21 12 81 17.33
books
7 Update books 2 9 23 14 32 80 17.81
8 Speed of Internet 6 18 32 16 9 81 17.05
9 Air-conditioner 20 36 20 4 1 81 16.14
10 Quantity of seats 2 24 30 22 3 81 17.00
Electrical Socket (for
11 1 13 19 24 24 81 17.70
laptop)

We consider the worst and best things in the above figure board. It seems that position of IU
library and air-conditioner has the high-rate. In contrast, one thing that is very necessary in
any library is about BOOKS. Most students complain about books in IU’s library which are

IU’s Library Research Project

 Detailed Finding 7

not rich. Books are not enough for all of students from each branches and years to research
and study more. Other critical problem is about updating books and arrangement of books.
It’s hard for any students to find out which books they need to refer.

We valuate these factors clearly, concisely in the following score-chart:

The last thing that students mention a lot is about librarian’s behaviors. Then we asked
them about how they feel about librarian’s behaviors, data about this problem was collected
and was shown in the following figure table:

Very Neither Good Very

# Question Good Fair Poor Bad Responses Mean
Good nor Bad Bad
1 Friendly 4 2 15 16 16 12 14 80 9.55
2 Skillful 1 4 14 27 19 11 3 80 9.24
3 Helpful 1 5 14 18 17 17 6 79 9.48

IU’s Library Research Project

 Conclusion 8

Librarian’s behavior is another key to explain concisely about the problems of this
survey. They are not friendly at all; it made students want to borrow books more and more
uncomfortable. When 1st year student come here, library in the university seem to be
strange place for them to use. So librarians play an essential role in the library. Their tasks
help freshman using the library effectively or finding out the books students need to learn
about. In fact, librarians from IU did their job not well. It’s a reason why students are afraid
of borrowing the books or asking librarians for something about books.

IV. Conclusion

With all the figures shown above, we can see that there are no dimensions in three of them
satisfy the IU’s students – Our library is less of nearly all kind of material facilities, lack of
books – non updating, and Librarian’s behaviors is unfriendly, not skillful, and unhelpful
also.

As this research shown, these kinds explain why there are little students come to the IU
library, even though they actually lacking of a good place to study, and keeping finding one.
The figures and numbers solved the objective of the research. Based on what we have found
– the recommendation of us seems clear:

We should update and invest more in our library, be specific in facilities, books, and training
for librarian. For facilities, we can buy photocopy machine, scanner, turn the air conditional
at 8:00 AM instead of 9:00 AM. About books – the heart of library, we should update it time
by time, take time to buy the best we can. And the last one, we can offer the training
opportunities for librarians in our library, they will be better off their own, more friendly,
more helpful, and skillful.

The limitation -

As the sample is somehow rather small with the total number of IU student, these all figures
and numbers may not reflect all the opinions and recommendations for our library. We also
just use e-survey, so with just one kind of observation, lacking of others like directly
observation, behavior observation… the result may also not reflect all dimensions of what
we want to find out. The survey is conducted in the internet, therefore, the limitation of
whom cannot use internet or someone that we cannot reach by the internet may make our
result go other direction and biased.

IU’s Library Research Project

References

1. Thư viện Trường Đại học Quốc tế . (2007, August). Retrieved June 20, 2008, from
http://www.hcmiu.edu.vn/thuvien.php
2. Qualtrics Analysis Report. Retrieved from June 25, 2008 from
http://qtrial.qualtrics.com/CP/Report.php?SV=Prod&RP=RP_0UFfdoEoZZdZaQY