What the Sentobib questionnaire covers - 8 research themes
What the questionnaire covers
Explore each research theme in detail - from visitor experience and audience profiles to societal impact.
Looking for pricing, methodology, or how to participate? See the Details page →8 themes, one integrated study
The Sentobib questionnaire is built around eight research themes. Together they give you a complete picture of your library's audience, performance, and impact. Themes, questions, and answer options can be customised to your needs.
Visitor Experience
How visitors experience the library across multiple dimensions
Impact on visitors
Societal value, well-being & visitor development
Evaluation
Offerings, infrastructure, accessibility & conditions
Satisfaction & NPS
Recommendation score and loyalty indicator
Communication
Channel effectiveness and visitor reach
Audience Profile
Demographics, motivations, preferences & visit behaviour
Former & Non-visitors
Barriers, opportunities & audience development
Open Feedback
Concrete suggestions in visitors' own words
Visitor Experience
How visitors experience the library
Sentobib captures how visitors experience your library across multiple dimensions: the collection and services, the spaces and atmosphere, the emotional response, the level of engagement, and the overall journey from arrival to departure.
This provides a detailed picture of what works well and where there is room for improvement. The experience data can be filtered by visitor type, language, visit frequency, and more - so you can understand how different audiences perceive the same visit.
Why this matters
Understanding the visitor experience lets you move beyond gut feeling. You gain evidence for what creates memorable visits - and what falls flat - across different audience segments.
Impact on visitors
Measuring a library's societal value and contribution to visitor well-being - across four impact dimensions.
Libraries do more than satisfy visitors - they contribute to personal development, well-being, and community. Each library receives its own Impact Compass scores across four dimensions, providing evidence of societal value that goes beyond attendance figures.
The model is based on The Cultural Value Project ("Understanding the value of arts & culture"), an extensive UK study initiated by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2019. This study explored how culture translates into impact and value, and how the concrete impact and value of cultural institutions can be measured through empirical and analytical methods. The model was further refined in Roskilde, Denmark, for the library sector.
Learn more about the Impact Compass Model here and its foundation, the Cultural Value Project, here.
Emotional impact
Haven
- Enthusiasm
- Concentration & immersion
- Wellness
- Being moved
Intellectual impact
Perspective
- Learning
- Reflection
- Critical thinking
- Cultivation of interest
Creative impact
Creativity
- Motivation & new ideas
- Development of skills
- Imagination
- Self-expression
Evaluation
Offerings, infrastructure & general conditions
Beyond the experience itself, visitors evaluate the practical aspects of your library: the quality and diversity of the offering, infrastructure, wayfinding, accessibility, facilities, staff friendliness, and conditions such as pricing and opening hours.
This structured feedback helps you identify operational strengths and areas for improvement, grounded in evidence. Because the questionnaire is standardised, these evaluations can be benchmarked against comparable libraries.
Actionable insight
Evaluation scores per category help you focus on what matters. Because the questionnaire is standardised, your scores can be benchmarked against comparable libraries.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Recommendation and loyalty indicator
Visitors are asked whether they would recommend the library to family, friends, or colleagues, on a scale from 0 to 10. This widely used metric calculates the Net Promoter Score - a single indicator of visitor loyalty.
Based on their score, respondents are categorised as promoters (9-10), passives (7-8), or detractors (0-6). The NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.
Communication
Are you reaching the right people through the right channels?
Sentobib measures how visitors learned about the library and how they evaluate your communication: the website, social media presence, signage, and other touchpoints.
Understanding which channels are most effective for different visitor segments helps you allocate resources more efficiently and improve outreach strategies.
Resource allocation
Evaluate how you reach different audience segments and adapt your communication strategy accordingly - targeting the right channels for the right visitors.
Audience Profile
Who visits your library - and why?
Sentobib provides a detailed profile of your audience: age, gender, education level, geographic origin, group composition, visit frequency, and how they heard about the library. This helps you understand who you are reaching - and who you are not.
The study also explores visit motivations: why did visitors decide to come? Understanding motivation patterns is key to shaping programming, communication, and audience development strategies.
All profile data can be cross-referenced with experience and satisfaction scores, revealing which visitor segments are most satisfied and why.
Cross-referencing
Combine profile data with satisfaction and experience scores. For example: are first-time visitors more satisfied than returning visitors? Do international visitors rate the experience differently?
Former & Non-visitors
Why do people not (re)visit your library?
The survey includes dedicated questions for former visitors - people who haven't visited for more than 12 months - and non-visitors who have never been. The intelligent questionnaire automatically identifies these profiles and presents only the relevant questions.
This research reveals barriers to visiting: lack of awareness, perceived irrelevance, practical obstacles, or negative past experiences. It also explores what could motivate these groups to visit or return.
The results provide qualitative insights that are directly actionable for audience development, programming, and outreach.
Growing your audience
Understanding why people don't come is just as valuable as understanding why they do. This data helps you identify which barriers are within your control - and which audiences are within reach.
Open Feedback
What do visitors want to tell you in their own words?
Throughout the questionnaire, open-text fields provide ample space for visitors to share thoughts, suggestions, and feedback in their own words. This qualitative data complements the structured scores with rich, concrete, and often surprising insights.
Visitors frequently share specific suggestions about services, facilities, programming, and communication - feedback that is immediately actionable. The open feedback is available in the live dashboard and can be filtered by language, visitor type, and other criteria.
What visitors actually say
Open feedback captures what closed questions miss: the broken bench, the confusing sign, the explanation that wasn't quite right. Those concrete remarks lead directly to improvements visitors can feel.
Want to know how the study works, what it costs, or how to get started?
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