Measuring Service Quality

This collection of papers about measuring service quality starts with the question of how a library evaluates whether it is delivering the best possible service. Libraries have traditionally been good at quantitative measurements, but qualitative assessment has been more elusive. The editors of this issue of Library Trends argue that library service quality is becoming both more recognisable and actionable.

The opening paper, by Colleen Cook and Fred M. Heath, is a research project based on interviews with research library users to investigate their perception of library service quality. The aim of the project was to understand the dimensions of library service quality among users by the LibQUAL+ method.

Cook develops the theme with Bruce Thompson to examine psychometric properties of scores from a Web‐based study of perceptions of library service quality. This uses data provided by an impressive 4,407 participants.

Steve Hiller uses the same LibQUAL+ method to assess needs, satisfaction, and library performance at the University of Washington Libraries. Another article by Rowena Poll explores how to manage service quality using the balanced scorecard.

This is followed by a study proposing and testing a model to explain the use of academic libraries, with explanatory factors including service quality considerations, resources and user characteristics. Shelley Phipps takes this further with a call to learn from the voices of users and to provide benchmarking for the overall improvement of academic libraries.

Ian Winkworth flies the flag for UK academic libraries with a look at innovative approaches to measuring service quality. This article looks at measurement frameworks, better use of statistics, benchmarking and measuring user satisfaction. Philip Calvert extends this to wider international variations in measuring customer expectations, notably in China and New Zealand.

In addition, there are further articles on user satisfaction surveys and on the very concept of service quality. The final paper, by John Carlo Bertot, looks at measuring service quality in the networked environment.

This collection of papers is very much variations on a theme. It has been tightly edited so that all contributions are immediately relevant to the issue of measuring service quality. This issue of Library Trends is certainly not for the casual reader and is really for the library manager responsible for qualitative evaluation of their service or for academic researchers in this subject. The research is extremely thorough and the issues covered by the contributors are wide ranging and comprehensive. There seems to be a general consensus that information service providers have been slow in embracing service quality measures, despite the methods being both available and actionable. The competitive and dynamic environment that libraries operate in today make service evaluation vital. It seems that it is just a matter of disseminating these theories and this collection is a good start.