To ensure that it can give the Cleveland Heights-University Heights community the best possible services in the coming years, Heights Libraries will be conducting a community survey from February 25 through March 18.
If BWU calls you, please take the time to participate in the phone survey! If you do not receive a call, please feel free to take the survey online or in person at any of our branches.
The Library has contracted with the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University (BWU) to conduct the survey by phone with residents of Cleveland Heights, University Heights, and selected areas of surrounding communities. Residents, library customers and non-customers alike, will be called at random, but residents who do not receive a call are encouraged to fill out the survey online at www.heightslibrary.org or on paper at any of Heights Libraries four branches.
The community survey is the follow-up to a large community study conducted by Heights Libraries in 2012. In April 2012, the Library contracted with NODIS (Northern Ohio Data and Information Service) at Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs to perform a comprehensive analysis of demographic and socioeconomic conditions, and the borrowing patterns of residents and patrons in our community.
“This is the first time the Library has undertaken such a comprehensive study of our community,” says Heights Libraries Director Nancy Levin. “We provide great service to our customers, but we can always improve, so we want to hear from our residents. What do you like? What don’t you like? We want to know.”
The NODIS report covers the Cleveland Heights-University Heights community, using the CH-UH School District boundaries. Demographic and socioeconomic data were gathered from the 2010 Census and the Census Bureau’s 2006-2010 American Community Survey. Data on patrons and borrowing were obtained from CLEVNET records and cover the year 2011 and the first quarter of 2012.
Heights Libraries received the report in July 2012, and soon after the public service managers formed the NODIS Report Action Committee to analyze the data, find actionable items, and determine what further information could and should be gathered from a related community survey to be conducted by BWU. Services provided by BWU will include designing and conducting the survey (by phone, online, and in-person), tabulating and analyzing the results, and writing a final report, which will be made available to the public.
The decision to collect and study this information was prompted by a desire to make data-driven decisions about programming, collections, services, outreach, and marketing, thereby ensuring the system’s resources are being used in the most efficient way possible to benefit the members of the community. The timing of the study and survey coincides with the system’s strategic planning process for 2014-2015.
