Law Library Student Survey

The Law Library conducted this survey in March 2024 and received about 270 student responses. Participants included students from the JD, Flex JD, LLM, MLS, and SJD programs, with fairly even representation between the 1L, 2L, and 3L classes.

When asked about their primary reasons for visiting the law library in person or online, the top response by far was to study or work in a quiet environment, followed by using a printer and using a study room.

Survey responses were overwhelmingly positive. For each question, a majority of respondents reported that they are "very satisfied" or "mostly satisfied" with the Law Library's space, services, and resources. Most questions had very few "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" responses.

Questions with the highest number of "satisfied" student responses include questions about the Law Library's electronic databases, website, noise policies, seating options, study rooms, and online study aids. Interestingly, questions about the Law Library's noise policies, seating options, and study rooms also received the highest number of "dissatisfied" responses, indicating these are the areas with the most room for improvement.

Student comments ranged widely, as is to be expected, but certain themes did emerge. Themes that the Law Library noticed from student comments include:

• Students are generally very appreciative of librarians and library staff and find them responsive, helpful, and knowledgeable.
• Students would really like more study rooms and better sound-proofing for study rooms.
• Students had a number of complaints and criticisms about the study room reservation system.
• Students really dislike the wooden chairs in the law library - they find them uncomfortable and not conducive to long periods of study.
• Students report that many of the soft seating options need to be deep-cleaned or replaced.
• Students would like more upper-level textbooks included in course reserves.
• Students would like longer checkout periods for print study aids in the Reserve collection.
• Students cited Quimbee and the Short & Happy Guides as favorite study aid resources, with several requests for online access to Aspen study aids (including Examples & Explanations, Emmanuel Crunchtime, and case summaries).
• Students expressed frustration at not being able to get into upper-level research courses and requested more sections of Advanced Legal Research.
• Students commented that they receive too much information at 1L orientation, and would appreciate a follow-up session on library resources and services later in the first semester.

For complete survey results, see the report linked above. (Note that student comments are not included in this public version of the report, but all student comments were reviewed and are being taken into consideration by the Law Library as we plan for future improvements.)

The Law Library has implemented the following improvements in response to student feedback from the 2024 survey:

Noise:

• Provide free earplugs at the Circulation desk and Reference desk as students enter the library.

• Pilot adding sound seals to room entrances to dampen noise. Sound sealing of study room 401 was successful. Exploring options with law school administration for sound sealing additional rooms.

Library seating:

• Perform deep cleaning for library soft seating.

Loan period for study aids & reserve collection:

• Increase loan period to 3 days.

Online study aids:

• Subscribe to Aspen Learning Library, to provide online access to Examples & Explanations, Emmanuel Crunchtime, and other popular study aids published by Aspen.

Study rooms:

• Purchase new fans and lamps to improve ventilation and lighting in study rooms.

• Purchase light therapy lamps that students can check out from the Circulation desk.

• Purchase additional white boards for study rooms, including moveable whiteboards.

• Purchase charging stations that students can check out from the Circulation desk for use in study rooms.

• Test all study room outlets and replace outlets that are not working.

Study room reservation system:

• Change default booking time to 15 minutes with ability to increase reservation up to 2 hours (to encourage students to book only the amount of time actually needed rather than defaulting to a 2 hour reservation), and add additional instructions to the booking page to clarify how to change the booking duration.

• Send automatic reminder emails with optional cancellation link 24 hours prior to reservation (to encourage students to cancel reservations that are no longer needed to free up rooms for other students).

• Adjust colors of reservation booking screen to make it more accessible to color blind users.

• Adjust reservation availability to 1 week in advance.(to address complaint that study rooms book up so far in advance that students have to reserve rooms weeks ahead of time even if they aren't sure what their schedule will look like that week).

Library seating:

• Advocate for long-term plan to replace the 170+ wooden chairs.

• Advocate to remove extra soft seating from study rooms.

Book requests & feedback:

• Add a form to the Law Library website where students, staff, and faculty can submit book recommendations and general suggestions.

Library trainings:

• In response to the need for additional library trainings after orientation, we created a law library scavenger hunt that students could complete on their own time to introduce them to the library space, services, and resources.

Advanced research classes:

• Offer at least one research class each semester in 2024/2025, and expand the summer advanced research class to include three sections.

Upper level casebooks:

• In addition to required first year casebooks, casebooks have been expanded to include the following

  • required upper division casebooks (Evidence, Constitutional Law, Professional Responsibility) (starting fall semester 2024)

  • bar success prescribed curriculum required casebooks (starting fall semester 2024)

• For more information, see our Casebook and Textbook Resources Guide: https://lawlibguides.seattleu.edu/textbooks.

• Work continues on educating faculty about open education options: https://library.seattleu.edu/open-education and affordable learning: https://library.seattleu.edu/affordablelearning

The law library is working on implementing the following improvements in response to student feedback from the 2024 survey:

Noise:

• Investigate adding white noise machines to study rooms.

Study rooms:

• Investigate whether building ventilation system could be kept on during early morning and evening library hours (especially during finals week) to improve ventilation.

• Create a long-term plan to add additional study rooms.