[evergreen-outreach] Update on annual survey

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

As I mentioned on our last Outreach Committee call, I wanted to look at 
various WordPress plugins to possibly handle the community survey this 
year. My goal was to have a platform where participants could enter data 
for this year and then have a way to easily edit their data in 
subsequent years so that they don't need to re-enter the same 
information from year to year. Another secondary goal was that, if we 
entered this data on the Evergreen web site, we might possibly be able 
to utilize in a directory of Evergreen libraries that might be a little 
more up to date than what's available on the wiki.

Rogan had previously looked for a plugin, and I have to concur with his 
opinion that there isn't anything that fits the bill.

I originally looked at directory plug-ins, but most don't allow 
customization of the fields without an additional, annual licensing 
cost. The most promising one I found was called Business Directory 
Plugins, and I think it might be worth investigating if we ever do host 
a library directory on the Evergreen site, but it seemed to be a little 
more than what we needed for the purposes of the annual survey.

I also looked at form plugins, which allow customizations, but they 
really didn't provide a way for users to update their information at 
annual survey time.

However, I think I may have found a good solution by using Google forms. 
I created a form that allows users to go back and edit their entries at 
a later time. The link to edit the entry is included in a confirmation 
e-mail, which most people will probably delete by the time we send out 
the survey again next year. However, I found a script that will generate 
those edit links and add them to the spreadsheet where the Google form 
results are stored. When we send the survey out next year, then, we can 
send this link directly to the person who filled out the form the 
previous year and ask them to update their information. If there are new 
questions on the form, they can also answer those. If nothing has 
changed, they just need to click in a checkbox and submit the form as 
is. What do you think?

The draft survey is available at https://goo.gl/forms/q4s12wQJ3eLnQNfe2. 
It's about the same as it was last year, with the addition of an e-mail 
field and a question on number of registered users, as we discussed on 
the call. I added the e-mail field to facilitate the process described 
in my last paragraph.

Feel free to let me know if you have any feedback on the survey itself 
or on how I would like to use Google forms.

Thank you and happy holidays!

Kathy

-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier