Customer satisfaction and the strategic role of university libraries

Abstract

The paper stresses the importance of listening to customers at university libraries and the need to move from a library-based view to a customer-based view. Largely on account of their public nature, academic libraries in Finland -where the study was conducted -have until recently, based their operations and development mainly on conventional procedures and library-based perspectives. However, in order to better serve their own clientele, as well as their parent organizations, they need to listen to the voices of their customers, the library users. One way of 'listening' is through a customer survey, in this case LibQUAL -a survey instrument developed in the US for libraries. It collects data on the quality of the services, thus enabling libraries to identify areas in which service levels should be improved.

Customer Types and the Empathetic Response

“…A good librarian can display all of these dimensions over time, but empathy serves an especially prominent role for effective customer service. Collection instruments such as LibQUAL take into consideration subjective factors, such as empathy in the Affect of Service category (Hakala & Nygren, 2010;Thompson, Cook, & Heath, 2003). I believe empathy is probably the most important component on a LibQUAL scale for public services personnel at night.…”

A Fuzzy Linguistic Extended LibQUAL+ Model to Assess Service Quality in Academic Libraries

“…A superiority gap (the perceived quality regarding the DSL by the library users) and an adequacy gap (the perceived quality regarding the MSL that is accepted by the library users) are determined according to the responses given by the library users. 14 The survey also asks supplementary queries on overall satisfaction and information literacy, and some queries concerning other information sources and the use of libraries. In this case, library users are asked for their impressions about queries on overall satisfaction and information literacy by giving a score from 1 to 9, while the queries concerning the other information sources and the use of libraries are answered by giving a value among \Daily", \Weekly", \Monthly", \Quarterly" or \Never".…”

“…More than 1,100 libraries have taken part in LibQUAL+ since 2000, including community college libraries, academic law libraries, health sciences libraries, public libraries, and university and college libraries. 8,[12][13][14][15] It was created in the US with the aim of collecting data on the library service quality. The objective of its designers was to create an instrument which would assist libraries better understand their users' judgments of service quality and to utilize this knowledge in planning their operations.…”

“…Furthermore, it has also been used to recognize best practices and reallocate resources in accordance. 14 Despite its popularity, the LibQUAL+ model has some drawbacks. On the one hand, users respond to each question providing a value from 1 to 9 on a 9-points Likert scale.…”

Users Satisfaction Toward Learning Space Services Quality at Tunku Tun Aminah Library (Technical University’s Library): A Case Study

“…Library facility users' "buy-in" was found to be important in the design process [4]. Hakalal and Nygre´n [5] pointed out that a key objective in the design of university libraries is to answer the question of "how the library can meet its customers' expectations while supporting the parent organization in reaching its objectives".…”