For this week’s blog post, I interviewed two faculty members from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. I’ll refer to them as Interviewees #1 and #2. I offered them a survey of five questions regarding their user experience with UCLA’s Music Library. In writing the survey, I kept in mind the emphasis that the lecture and readings place on the importance in libraries of organization, inviting aesthetics, innovation, and understanding of user needs. My goal was to learn whether the UCLA Music Library fully meets those requirements and offers a positive user experience or not, and whether its target community embraces it or prefers other information sources.

I asked the interviewees the following questions:

1. How frequently do you use the Music Library for your information needs?

Interviewee #1 uses the Library several times a week, while Interviewee #2 uses it only once every few weeks, but uses its website more frequently.

2. What other information sources do you use? How frequently do you use them compared to the Music Library?

Interviewee #1 uses online sources such as Wikipedia or Oxford Music Online when he needs to look up information quickly, but the Library is still his primary source. Interviewee #2, on the other hand, uses online sources and her personal book collection daily, more often than she uses the Library.

3. Does the Music Library have any shortcomings – not just in content, but in terms of organization, aesthetics, etc. – that keep you from using it more frequently than you do?

Interviewee #1 has no complaints, while Interviewee #2 dislikes the Library’s current website design.

4. Do you find any aspects of the Music Library outdated? Do you prefer other information sources for being more “contemporary”?

Neither interviewee considered anything outdated.

5. What improvements would you suggest that the Music Library make?

Interviewee #1 said only “Find more money and buy more things!” Interviewee #2 wishes the Library would display the current issues of journals at the entrance, so that anyone who needs them knows instantly when they arrive.

If these two interviews are all indicative of the faculty’s general opinions, then the Music Library’s user experience seems to be essentially positive. The faculty uses it often, finds it “in touch with the times,” and doesn’t have many improvements to suggest. True, there are some areas that the Library may need to rethink, i.e. the website design and the organization of its journal collection. But for the most part, its seems to know its users needs and deliver them.