An Introduction to LibQUAL

1
An Introduction to LibQUAL

• Amy Hoseth
• Massachusetts LSTA Orientation Meeting
• Boston, MA
• October 21, 2005

2
Total Circulation
Note. M. Kyrillidou and M. Young. (2003). ARL
Statistics 2002-03. Washington, D.C. ARL, p.8.
3
Reference Transactions
Note. M. Kyrillidou and M. Young. (2003). ARL
Statistics 2002-03. Washington, D.C. ARL, p.8.
4
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 applicablei.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

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LibQUAL Goals

• Improve mechanisms and protocols for evaluating
  libraries
• Develop Web-based tools for assessing library
  service quality
• Identify best practices in providing library
  service
• Support libraries seeking to understand changes
  in user behavior
• Assist libraries seeking to re-position library
  services in todays new environment

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LibQUAL Process

• SERVQUAL dimensions served as a priori
  theoretical starting point
• SERVQUAL originally created for use in the
  business sector

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Multiple Methodsof Listening to Customers

• Transactional surveys
• Mystery shopping
• New, declining, and lost-customer surveys
• Focus group interviews
• Customer advisory panels
• Service reviews
• Customer complaint, comment, and inquiry capture
• Total market surveys
• Employee field reporting
• Employee surveys
• Service operating data capture
• A SERVQUAL-type instrument is most suitable for
  these methods

A. Parasuraman. The SERVQUAL Model Its Evolution
And Current Status. (2000). Paper presented at
ARL Symposium on Measuring Service Quality,
Washington, D.C.
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The LibQUAL Premise
PERCEPTIONS SERVICE

• .only customers judge quality
• all other judgments are essentially
• irrelevant

Zeithaml, Parasuraman, Berry. (1999). Delivering
quality service. NY The Free Press.
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The Survey Over Time
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76 Interviews Conducted

• York University
• University of Arizona
• Arizona State
• University of Connecticut
• University of Houston
• University of Kansas
• University of Minnesota
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Washington
• Smithsonian
• Northwestern Medical

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Dimensions of Library ServiceQuality
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Reliability

• You put a search on a book and its just gone
  its not reacquired. Theres more of a problem
  of lost books, of books that are gone and nobody
  knows why and nobodys doing anything about it.
• Faculty member

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Affect of Service

• I want to be treated with respect. I want you to
  be courteous, to look like you know what you are
  doing and enjoy what you are doing. Dont get
  into personal conversations when I am at the
  desk.
• Faculty
  member

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Ubiquity of Access

• Over time my own library use has become
  increasingly electronic. So that the amount of
  time I actually spend in the library is getting
  smaller and the amount of time I spend at my desk
  on the web is increasing.
• Faculty member

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Comprehensive Collections

• I think one of the things I love about academic
  life in the United States is that as a culture,
  we tend to appreciate the extraordinary
  importance of libraries in the life of the mind.
• Faculty member

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Library as Place

• One of the cherished rituals is going up the
  steps and through the gorgeous doors of the
  library and heading up to the fifth floor to my
  study. I have my books and I have six million
  volumes downstairs that are readily available to
  me in an open stack library.
• Faculty member

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Library as Place

• I guess youd call them satisfiers. As long as
  they are not negatives, they wont be much of a
  factor. If they are negatives, they are a big
  factor.
• Faculty member

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Library as Place

• The poorer your situation, the more you need the
  public spaces to work in. When I was an
  undergraduate, I spent most of my time in the
  library, just using it as a study space.
• Faculty member

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Self-Reliance

• first of all, I would turn to the best search
  engines that are out there. Thats not a person
  so much as an entity. In this sense, librarians
  are search engines just with a different
  interface.
• Faculty member

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Self-Reliance

• By habit, I usually try to be self-sufficient.
  And Ive found that I am actually fairly
  proficient. I usually find what Im looking for
  eventually. So I personally tend to ask a
  librarian only as a last resort.
• Graduate
  student

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LibQUAL Core Questions(Year I)

• __________________________________________________
  ___________________________
• Factor_ ______ _
• No. I II III IV Item Core
  
• __________________________________________________
  ___________________________
• 32 .84947 .12848 .24465 .13335 1 Willingness
  to help users
• 33 .80847 .13662 .25348 .14147 1 Giving users
  individual attention
• 7 .80757 .17881 .12781 .21125 1 Employees
  deal with users caring fashion
• 50 .79273 .19288 .18847 .12497 1 Employees
  who are consistently courteous
• 31 .77262 .16358 .26461 .20061 1 Employees
  have knowledge answer questions
• 5 .74072 .14754 .18453 .29624 1 Employees
  understand needs of users
• 3 .74052 .15102 .17296 .20793 1 Readiness
  to respond to users' questions
• 18 .71718 .19757 .18289 .26766 1 Employees
  who instill confidence in users
• 43 .62487 .22402 .29970 .28256 0
  Dependability handling service problems
•  
• 20 .16556 .87679 .11430 .16236 2 A haven
  for quiet and solitude
• 2 .17739 .83172 .08498 .13901 2 A
  meditative place
• 19 .22362 .83147 .14705 .22566 2 A
  contemplative environment
• 25 .16013 .80492 .18894 .16628 2 Space that
  facilitates quiet study
• 41 .20398 .80204 .17599 .20255 2 A place
  for reflection and creativity

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Dimensions of Library ServiceQuality
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Survey Instrument
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The Value of QualitativePerspectives

• Only with in-depth, local, qualitative,
  culture studies can libraries know and
  understand what compels some to remain as far
  away from the library as possible, while others
  refrain from engaging library staff in their own
  search for proficiency and self-reliance
  (Lincoln, Y. Insights into Library Services and
  Users from Qualitative Research. Library
  Information Science Research 24, Issue 1, 2002).

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Cultural Perspective/Self-Reliance

• If Foucault is correct that we in the West live
  in surveilled societies, then what function does
  self-reliance serve? The library user who wishes
  to navigate resources with as little help as
  possible seeks a kind of privacy from the
  surveillance of librarian help Having found the
  relative anonymity of cyberspace and a virtual
  world, this self-reliant user now seeks the same
  independence and lack of surveillance in the
  text-based and digitized universe of information
  resources known as the library. (Lincoln, p. 12).

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Cultural Perspective/Library as Place

• Its beyond the ease with which you can find
  information, just because the library experience
  is something like Greece or Athens
  (Undergraduate)
• The library needs to welcome them in. It needs
  to make them feel like this is a place where they
  can be in almost a haven, a refuge (Business
  professor)
• Writing an undergraduate thesis with this big
  dome over his headhe felt really like a
  scholar (Linguistics professor)

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Cultural Perspective/Collections

• In the physical vs. virtual reality, texture
  has become important. Density of collections
  becomes important, and, if collections are not
  complete, users want to know where they can find
  missing volumes, journal articles, and/or how
  swiftly interlibrary loan will work for them
  (Lincoln, p. 11).

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E-mail to SurveyAdministrators

• A number of the LibQUAL survey questions
  asked to rate the library from low to high, with
  n/a if it doesnt apply to me. The latter wasnt
  clear, but there were a number of questions which
  implied what a library should be that I dont
  agree with. For example, a number of questions
  asked whether the library was a contemplative
  place or a center for intellectual
  stimulation. I dont think our library is, but I
  dont want it to be, and I certainly wouldnt
  want any scarce resources to be devoted to this.
• Communication to Webmaster

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Service as Performance

• as users have metamorphosed from penitents to
  self-reliant information surfers, the rules of
  engagement have changed. Service is not
  something dispensed rather, it is enacted as an
  elaborate cultural ritual, the texture and fabric
  of which is changing in front of us. Service may
  now embody multiple overlays of meaning, many too
  dense for anything but an anthropological
  fieldwork study to uncover (Lincoln, p. 15).

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E-mail to SurveyAdministrators

• Other questions implied that any good library
  staff would empower me to find my own research.
  I dont mean to sound snippish, but if I wanted
  to be empowered to be able to find all my own
  research, Id enroll in the outstanding school of
  library science here on campus. I thought the
  reason we bring in talented and trained
  librarians is so that we can efficiently divide
  labor, and I can remain dependent on them
  unempowered, if you will, to assist me when I
  need it. (And let me assure you I AM dependent,
  and they ARE excellent in assisting me.)
• Communication to Webmaster

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Dimensions of LibraryService Quality
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Focus Group Follow-Up(at Texas AM)

• Downward trend in scores on question, Employees
  have knowledge to answer user questions.
• What employees? I asked for help in searching on
  the 1st floor of the annex. They said they arent
  trained in that
• What knowledge? Some just say, I dont know.
  Do you know who could tell me? I ask, and
  sometimes, they dont know that either (Crowley
  Gilreath, p. 82-83).

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The Box

• Why the box is so important
• About 40 of participants provide open-ended
  comments, and these are linked to demographics
  and quantitative data
• Users elaborate the details of their concerns
• Users feel the need to be constructive in their
  criticisms, and offer specific suggestions for
  action

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Rapid Growth

• Languages
• American English
• British English
• French
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Consortia
• Each may create 5 local questions to add to their
  survey

• Types of Institutions
• Academic Health Sciences
• Academic Law
• Academic Military
• College or University
• Community College
• European Business
• Hospital
• Public
• State
• Countries
• U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands,
  Sweden, France, South Africa, Egypt, Australia

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LibQUAL Participants
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World LibQUAL Survey
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In Closing

• LibQUAL methodology focuses on success from the
  users point of view (outcomes)
• Demonstrates that a Web-based survey can handle
  large numbers users are willing to fill it out
  and survey can be executed quickly with minimal
  expense
• LibQUAL requires limited local survey expertise
  and resources
• Analysis available at local and
  inter-institutional levels
• Many opportunities for using demographics to
  discern user behaviors

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LibQUAL Resources

• LibQUAL Websitehttp//www.libqual.org
• Publications http//www.libqual.org/publications
  
• Events and Training http//www.libqual.org/event
  s
• LibQUAL Online Tutorial
• http//www.libqual.org/Information/Tools/index.cf
  m
• LibQUAL Procedures Manual http//www.libqual.or
  g/Information/Manual/index.cfm