NewSPAL, the charity taking on Surrey County Council’s performing arts collection, is now open for business. With the support of its community...
As a trustee of the Music Libraries Trust, Making Music’s Chief Executive has been working with fellow trustees to commission research into the use of music libraries.
Below we share a message from Music Libraries Trust Chair Sally Groves MBE, asking for your help.
Please complete the music library user survey by 9am on Monday 3 August.
Dear music library user,
The Music Libraries Trust exists to support education and research into music libraries in the UK and Ireland. We know there is an urgent need to bring the future of our music libraries to greater public attention. Amateur music making in the UK is one of our most precious assets and your local libraries play an invaluable role in this. Right now, all performing organisations are in lockdown, but we need to look ahead to be prepared for the future.
We have commissioned Dr Michael Bonshor to run two surveys to collect the most up-to-date data on how you use your local library. We would be so grateful if you would kindly take the time to answer in as much detail as you can.
To take part in the survey, you can complete an online user questionnaire, which is designed to:
- Obtain information about current use of music libraries
- Explore areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction amongst music library service providers and service users
- Identify any requirements for practical changes in resources and service provision
- Extrapolate potential strategies for ‘future proofing’ music library services
If you work in a music library, there is also an online staff questionnaire that you can fill out.
Please complete the surveys by 9am on Monday 3 August
We appreciate you may be working from home, perhaps isolated or perhaps trying to keep the children from boredom and frustration. But we hope you agree that these next few weeks provide a window of opportunity before the summer break. Every question here has been weighed and assessed for its usefulness and your feedback will mean we can be armed with accurate data for promoting the future of our music libraries.
If you need to answer the questions in instalments, you will be able to keep saving your responses and return to the questionnaire later, rather than having to finish it all in one sitting. However, we have conducted a pilot study to ensure that the questionnaire is user-friendly and not excessively time consuming. We hope that you will enjoy it!
We will keep you informed on the results and on our next steps.
With many thanks in advance,
Sally Groves MBE
Chair, Music Libraries Trust
