Were you impacted by the catastrophic flooding that hit the South Carolina Midlands in October 2015 or Hurricane Matthew last November? Three University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science faculty — Dr. Feili Tu-Keefner, Dr. Jingjing Liu and Dr. Darin Freeburg — are conducting research to examine the role played by public libraries and how community members accessed information during these natural disasters.
They are specifically interested in knowing perceptions about the following:
- the importance of local public libraries and their services to their communities;
- whether or not you used the services of your local public library at this time;
- which disaster information sources you used and your evaluation of the information’s credibility; and
- how you shared information with others — for example, using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
The team is inviting participation in a survey from now through September 30, 2017. If you experienced either or both of these catastrophic floods, you could help make a difference in illustrating the efforts of local public libraries to support emergency response and recovery during times of disaster.
The study has been granted the USC IRB approval. Participation in the study is voluntary, and respondents will not be identified in any reports of the research findings. After completion of the survey, respondents can choose to be entered in a sweepstakes, through which five people will win a $25 Amazon.com gift card.
The survey is designed for ease of response, and can be finished in approximately 10 minutes.
Please take one of the following short surveys:
