The original SCONUL Satisfaction Survey template was developed by Geoffrey Ford and Don Revill in 1996 in response to the Follett Report. Building on the work of Nancy Van House and colleague of the American Library Association, Revill and Ford produced the Briefing Paper User Satisfaction: Standard Survey Forms for Academic Libraries. In 2001 this paper was reviewed and updated, and the Briefing Paper Measuring User Satisfaction: A practical guide for academic libraries was produced by Christopher West on behalf of the SCONUL Advisory Committee on Performance Indicators.

The paper provided a survey template which aimed to provide academic libraries an effective and relatively painless way of measuring the satisfaction levels of their customers. The questionnaire is designed to be:

• Flexible, by allowing users to adapt questions to local requirements
• Concise, to encourage a high response rate
• Easily analysed, by being able to use Libra Software or SPSS

The questions are divided into five sections covering:

• Demographics
• Activity
• Satisfaction with key services and facilities
• Importance of key services and facilities
• Overall satisfaction levels

As library and information services have evolved over the last decade, the template has been adapted to take account of factors like e-resources and the convergence of library and information services. The current templates were updated in 2005 and have two variants, according to whether your library forms part of a converged service or not.