Law Library Student Survey

The Law Library conducted its 2025 student survey in March and received 180 responses. Participants included students from the JD, Flex JD, LLM, MLS, and SJD programs. Among JD respondents, class years were fairly evenly represented: 37% were 1Ls, 36% were 2Ls, and 26% were 3Ls.

When asked about their primary reasons for visiting the Law Library in person or online, the top response was to study or work in a quiet environment (156 responses), followed by using a printer (124 responses) and using a group study room (114 responses). Top reasons for visiting the Law Library online included booking a study room (128 responses), using library databases (124 responses), and accessing online study aids (91 responses). Respondents could select multiple options for these questions.

Survey responses were again very positive. For each question, a majority of respondents reported being “very satisfied” or “mostly satisfied” with the Law Library’s space, services, and resources. Most questions had very few “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” responses. Additionally, 168 students said the Law Library is either “very important” or “somewhat important” to them; no respondents said it was unimportant.

Student comments ranged widely, but several consistent themes emerged. The number of comments was much lower than the number of survey responses, so the quantitative data are likely more indicative of overall student attitudes. Nonetheless, recurring themes in the comments include:

• Students are generally very appreciative of librarians and library staff and find them responsive, helpful, and knowledgeable. The students who use our resource sharing services are very appreciative overall.

• Students would really like more study rooms and better sound-proofing for those spaces.

• Students had a number of complaints about the study room reservation system/user interface.

• Students dislike the old wooden chairs in the library, finding them uncomfortable for long study sessions.

• Students requested more upper-level textbooks in the course reserves collection.

• Many students mentioned missing Quimbee.

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 students 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 2025 survey:

• In addition to the previous expansion of casebooks in the 2024-25 academic year, casebook purchasing expanded again to include one copy of all required texts.
• Purchased multiple copies of select in-demand casebooks for high-enrollment courses.
• Implemented a storage solution for the expanded course reserves collection.
• Promoted awareness that the library accepts donated textbooks for course reserves.

Spaces & equipment:

• Purchased additional chargers for check out at the circulation desk.
• Continued to advocate for chair replacement and more study rooms.

Study rooms:

• Changed default booking range back to 2 hours.
• Updated instructions to make booking process clearer.
• Removed extra step that appeared to be confusing students.
• Piloting 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.
• Stocked all study rooms with dry-erase markers.

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:

• In Fall 2025, expanded the research class for journal students so that all journal students can take the class (previously limited to 15 students).

Future survey planning:

• Adding a question to next year’s survey about student perspectives on security and keycard access.

The Law Library is working on implementing the following improvements in response to student feedback from the 2025 survey:

Underused services:

• Create a flyer advertising lesser-known library services; post in all study rooms and around the law school.