The method by which we have uncovered the mission, "goals, objectives, and priorities of the [BSJ]" (Wood 1), were twofold. First we conducted an interview with the BSJ's head librarian. Then we gathered economic and historical data from documents found at the BSJ or from information gleaned from the University of Alberta Library Website.

A learner-centred collection management approach, as advocated by the library's mission, seeks to understand the library's clientele in order to determine what collection needs exist. This community study, therefore, used a survey methodology to gauge the needs of the primary and secondary user population in the following areas: library hours, library attendance, main information-seeking purpose, primary materials used in seeking information, research interests, and library information gaps. The primary users of the BSJ, as identified in its mission statement, are the teaching staff and the students of the FSJ. There are 66 instructors and 545 students, of which 457 are undergraduate and 88 are graduate. Eighty Edmonton teachers of the Centre-Nord francophone school division make up the other part of the survey respondents and are secondary users, although DeLongchamp says that the BSJ caters to all those who work in French programs across Alberta and elsewhere. We sent an e-mail message, as well as a physical mail-box note, to each of the 691 people asking them to fill out the on-line survey (see Annex three) located on the FSJ's internet site (http://www.fsj.ualberta.ca/). Thanks to the hypertextual nature of this survey, it was possible to introduce hypertext links to examples or definitions of potentially ambiguous terms, e.g. monograph or reference resource. We called for survey responses on two occasions, in order to maximize response rates, which turned out to be 60 percent. A database software, called FileMaker Pro, gathered the incoming data from the on-line site into predetermined fields. Once all the data was entered into the database the researchers analyzed the data statistically. The survey presented a source of bias in that it did not sample all potential users of the library: other francophone school teachers in Alberta and immersion and core French teachers. We have attempted to alleviate tertiary-user bias by incorporating census data.

Learning about the current BSJ collection and its relationship to its user community was the second step in analyzing the present collection and suggesting how it should move forward (Wood 1). The BSJ's electronic catalogue provided a good overview to all the electronic databases and resources that are available at the BSJ through its consortial relations. As an external resource, NEOS and TAL's Internet sites gave access to the list of participating libraries from which the BSJ can request documents.

Finally, we needed to "determine the environmental characteristics likely to have an impact on the library collection" (Wood 13). This involved the 1996 census data from Statistics Canada, which provided information on the tertiary users of the library, that is the francophone community in the Edmonton region. We gathered statistics on population by home language, population by mother tongue, and population by ethnic origins, in order to get a sense of the state of the francophone community in Edmonton and to foresee its impact on the BSJ. The City of Edmonton's 1999 demographic profile resource provided population age in the library's region. Finally, an overview of the Edmonton francophone associations and organizations present on the Internet identified the tertiary community's interests, as well as its information resources outside the library. As for geographical location, it was based on observable facts.