Bonnie MacEwan

The UCLA Senior Fellows Program

ABSTRACT The UCLA Senior Fellows Program is a professional development program for senior-level academic librarians held biennially at the University of California, Los Angeles. This article reports on the results of interviews conducted during July–August 2007 with 11 library directors who had previously participated in the Senior Fellows Program. Participants were asked to identify the aspect(s) of the Senior Fellows Program that had been most valuable to them and to reflect on lessons learned, the impact of the program on their personal and professional development, and the support they received from faculty and cohort group members.

Understanding users’ needs and making collections choices

Understanding user needs has always been the key to building relevant collections and designing appropriate services. The availability of electronic resources and the many choices of format and access methods have made understanding library users even more critical. Librarians can use formal and informal methods to gather information about users. Formal methods include surveys and focus groups. The information gathered can be used for selection and service. It should also be used to reshape the scholarly information system to better meet the needs of undergraduates and researchers, beginning users and sophisticated users’ and users who are doing in-depth research and those who just want a small amount of information quickly.