A fairytale about 22 items and a box

A fairytale about “ 22 items and a box” presented by Martha Kyrillidou 19 -20 January 2004 Glasgow, UK old. libqual. org

Relationships: perceptions, service quality and satisfaction …. only customers judge quality; all other judgments are essentially irrelevant” Zeithaml, Parasuraman, Berry. (1999). Delivering quality service. NY: The Free Press.

Relationships: perceptions, service quality and satisfaction Presentation by Parasuraman: http: //old. libqual. org/documents/admin/Parsu. ppt

The Association of Research Libraries Mission: Shaping and influencing forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. Members: 123 major research libraries in North America. Ratios: 4% of the higher education institutions providing 40% of the information resources. Users: 3 million students and faculty served. Expenditures: $2. 48 billion annually, $954 million for acquisitions of which 20% is invested in access to electronic resources. www. arl. org ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH LIBRARIES

The Problem of Assessment in Academic Libraries • Traditional statistics emphasize inputs, expenditures, acquisitions, holdings, etc. • National Rankings are often misleading • No demonstrable relationship between expenditures and service quality • The lack of metrics describing outcomes: success from the user’s point of view

Assessment “The difficulty lies in trying to find a single model or set of simple indicators that can be used by different institutions, and that will compare something across large groups that is by definition only locally applicable—i. e. , how well a library meets the needs of its institution. Librarians have either made do with oversimplified national data or have undertaken customized local evaluations of effectiveness, but there has not been devised an effective way to link the two. ” Sarah Pritchard, Library Trends, 1996

ARL New Measures Initiative u Collaboration among member leaders with strong interest in this area u Specific projects developed with different models for exploration u Intent to make resulting tools and methodologies available to full membership and wider community

ARL New Measures Projects • Demonstration project for service effectiveness measures (Lib. QUAL+ ) • Project to define usage measures for electronic information resources (E-Metrics Project) • Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS): a joint development effort led by Kent State with IMLS funding • Investigation of role libraries play in support of the research process • Investigation of role libraries can play in campus learning outcomes activities • Identification of cost-drivers and development of cost-benefit studies

What is Lib. QUAL+™ is a suite of services that libraries use to solicit, track, understand, and act upon users’ opinions of service quality. The program’s centerpiece is a rigorously tested Web-based survey bundled with local training that helps libraries assess and improve library services.

Lib. QUAL+™ Project Goals u Improvement of mechanisms and protocols for evaluating libraries u Development of web-based tools for assessing library service quality u Identification of best practices in providing library service u Establishment of a Service Assessment Capability at ARL

Lib. QUAL+™ Outcomes u Securing information that contributes meaningfully to planning and improvement efforts at a local level u Providing analytical frameworks that institutional staff can apply without extensive training or assistance u Helping decision-makers understand success of investments u Finding useful inter-institutional comparisons

Lib. QUAL+™ Resources • An ARL/Texas A&M University joint developmental effort based on SERVQUAL. • Lib. QUAL+ ™ initially supported by a 3 -year grant from the U. S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post. Secondary Education (FIPSE) • Initial project established an expert team, re-grounded SERVQUAL concepts, and designed survey methodology • Survey conducted at over 400 libraries resulting in a data base of over half a million user responses • NSF funded project to refocus Lib. QUAL+™ on the National Science Digital Library (NSDL)

Dimensions 2000 2001 2002 2003 41 -items 56 -items 25 -items 22 -items Affect of Service Affect Reliability Library as Place Reliability Personal Control Information Control Provision of Physical Collections Self-Reliance Information Access to Information

Library as Place Presentation by Sarah Thomas: Architecture as an Asset for Community Building http: //www. arl. org/arl/proceedings/142/thomas. html

Information Control Presentation by Fred Heath The Findings From Lib. QUAL+ and Outsell Research: Cross Checking for Correlations http: //www. arl. org/arl/proceedings/142/heath. html

Service Affect Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel Ceiling http: //sun. science. wayne. edu/~mcogan/Humanities/Sistin e/Panels/creation. html

Library Values Library values are reflected in: • physical environment (Library as Space) • warmth, empathy, reliability and assurance of library staff (Affect of Service) • ability to control the information universe in an efficient way (Information Control) and are unifying and powerful forces for: • Overcoming language and cultural barriers • Bridging the worlds of our users • Improving library services • Advancing the betterment of individuals and societies

Lib. QUAL+TM Participants Year 0 13 Spring 2000 Year 1 42 Spring 2001 Year 2 164 Spring 2002 For More Information about Participants: Visit old. libqual. org Year 3 308 Spring 2003 Year 4 204+ Spring 2004

In an Ocean of Information How do you Define and Measure Library Service Quality?

Strategies - Actions Confirming expectations Disconfirming expectations Confirming perceptions Disconfirming perceptions

Think out of the box

Sensitivity to context “If sensitivity to context is important in benchmarking, these new … studies will hopefully confirm this … both empirical and ethnographic methods are necessary to disentangle potentially erroneous assumptions and illuminate contextual and cultural differences that affect both expectations of library customers, and library performance” Rowena Cullen (IFLA, August 2003)

In Conclusion u Lib. QUAL+ methodology focuses on success from the users point of view (outcomes) u Lib. QUAL+ demonstrates web based survey can handle large numbers; users are willing to fill it out; and survey can be executed quickly with minimal expense u Lib. QUAL+ requires limited local survey expertise and resources u Analysis available at local and inter-institutional levels u Lots of opportunities for using demographics to discern user behaviors