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1 – 10 of 394One of the aims of the LIBER strategic plan 2009‐2012 was to stimulate the use of LibQUAL+ by European research libraries. The purpose of this study is to investigate how far this…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the aims of the LIBER strategic plan 2009‐2012 was to stimulate the use of LibQUAL+ by European research libraries. The purpose of this study is to investigate how far this initiative has been successful.
Design/methodology/approach
All 385 LIBER libraries were invited to complete an online survey, mounted on Survey Monkey. The questionnaire was meant for all libraries, whether or not they performed a user survey during the last five years and, if so, whether or not they used LibQUAL + as the survey instrument.
Findings
The study shows that the use of LibQUAL+ in Europe is widespread and that there is a great potential for further growth. LibQUAL+'s strong areas are the ease of administering and opportunities for benchmarking. A weak area is the user unfriendliness: 50 per cent of the libraries having experience with LibQUAL+ find the survey difficult to complete for the participants. Carrying out a LibQUAL+ survey has great practical implications. More than 75 per cent of the respondents took measures to improve their performance on weak areas or to promote their existing services better among the user community. About one third established new services.
Practical implications
The results point at the need to improve the user friendliness of LibQUAL+.
Originality/value
This is the first study that covers the experience of European research libraries with LibQUAL+ on a broad scale.
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Bruce Thompson, Martha Kyrillidou and Colleen Cook
Survey researchers sometimes develop large pools of items about which they seek participants' views. As a general proposition, library participants cannot reasonably be expected…
Abstract
Purpose
Survey researchers sometimes develop large pools of items about which they seek participants' views. As a general proposition, library participants cannot reasonably be expected to respond to 100+ items on a given service quality assessment protocol. This paper seeks to describe the use of matrix sampling to reduce that burden on the participant.
Design/methodology/approach
Matrix sampling is a survey method that can be used to collect data on all survey items without requiring every participant to react to every survey question. Here the features of data are investigated from one such survey, the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol, and the participation rates, completion times, and result comparisons across the two administration protocols – the traditional LibQUAL+® protocol and the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol – at each of the four institutions are explored.
Findings
Greater completion rates were realized with the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol.
Originality/value
The data from the Lite protocol might be the most accurate representation of the views of all the library users in a given community.
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S.M. Zabed Ahmed and Md. Zahid Hossain Shoeb
The purpose of this paper is to assess the psychometric validity of the LibQUAL+® instrument in a developing country context in Bangladesh.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the psychometric validity of the LibQUAL+® instrument in a developing country context in Bangladesh.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a paper-version of the original LibQUAL 22 core-items to survey library users' perceptions of minimum, desired and perceived levels of service quality of university libraries in Bangladesh. The survey accumulated a total of 544 valid responses over a period of two weeks. The means and standard deviations for each service item were computed for the three service levels. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the original three-factorial structure and to assess the psychometric validity of the LibQUAL instrument. A one-factor CFA and separate CFAs by gender and user group on perceived services were conducted to determine the original three-factor structure of LibQUAL scale. Exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were also performed on the perceived scores to examine the potential factor structure of the scale. The descriptive statistics including EFAs and the CFA models were performed through IBM® SPSS® Statistics and IBM® SPSS® Amos, respectively.
Findings
The findings of this paper showed that all perceived services fell below the minimum scores. The confirmatory factor analyses found poor model fits for the original three-factor solution of the LibQUAL scale. The EFA results also showed no factorial structure similar to the original LibQUAL dimensions. The findings exhibited a low psychometric quality of LibQUAL in academic library settings in Bangladesh.
Originality/value
This study is the first of its kind to empirically examine the psychometric validity of the LibQUAL scale in a developing country perspective in Bangladesh.
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Clayton Garthwait and Elizabeth A. Richardson
The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of using the LibQUAL+™ library assessment suite in a statewide library consortium.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of using the LibQUAL+™ library assessment suite in a statewide library consortium.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides anecdotal information about one consortium's experience implementing the LibQUAL+™ survey. It provides a description of the survey and a narrative of the Keystone Library Network's experience, and includes other information from published literature regarding the survey's implementation in other libraries and library consortia when relevant.
Findings
Implementing a library service quality survey as a consortium has benefits, but also provides challenges. Consortium‐wide planning, training, coordination, survey promotion, and intra‐consortium communication are important.
Practical implications
Consortia considering performing a library assessment will want to consider the challenges and considerations mentioned.
Originality/value
This paper provides information about, and suggestions for, implementing the survey in a consortium, differing from the existing body of literature that tends to focus on the instrument itself or on interpreting outcomes.
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Bruce Thompson, Martha Kyrillidou and Colleen Cook
In 2009, in Performance Measurement and Metrics, the authors reported results of LibQUAL+® experiments at four universities in which the use of the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol was…
Abstract
Purpose
In 2009, in Performance Measurement and Metrics, the authors reported results of LibQUAL+® experiments at four universities in which the use of the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol was investigated. The purpose of this article is to briefly report related results for the first use of LibQUAL+® in Hebrew. The authors also take the opportunity to propose another method for equating scores across the LibQUAL+® Lite and the traditional LibQUAL+® protocols.
Design/methodology/approach
Matrix sampling is a survey method which can be used to collect data on all survey items without requiring every participant to react to every survey question. Here, the authors investigate the features of data from one such survey, the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol, exploring the participation rates, completion times, and result comparisons across the two administration protocols – the traditional LibQUAL+® protocol and the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol – at an Israeli University and for the first time, in Hebrew.
Findings
This experimental approach confirms the previous work which showed that greater completion rates were realized with the LibQUAL+® Lite protocol. The data from the Lite protocol might be the most accurate representation of the views of all the library users in a given community.
Originality/value
This is the first time LibQUAL+® has been used in Hebrew.
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Miguel Morales, Riadh Ladhari, Javier Reynoso, Rosario Toro and Cesar Sepulveda
LibQUAL is a service‐quality assessment instrument developed by the Association of Research Libraries in partnership with Texas A&M University Library and has been used in…
Abstract
Purpose
LibQUAL is a service‐quality assessment instrument developed by the Association of Research Libraries in partnership with Texas A&M University Library and has been used in numerous institutions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a Spanish version of the scale in terms of its structure, reliability, and validity.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected among students at a well‐known Mexican university. A total of 374 completed questionnaires were used in the analyses. Library service quality was measured using 22 items taken directly from the 2004 version of the LibQUAL scale. The back‐translation method was used to translate the original English version of LibQUAL into Spanish. Data were analysed using SPSS 16.0 and EQS 6.1 in the exploratory and confirmatory stages, respectively.
Findings
The study findings show that the Spanish version of the LibQUAL instrument actually consists of four dimensions: “affect of service”; “information access”; “personal control”; and “library as place”. The results support the reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity of the proposed Spanish version of the scale.
Originality/value
This is the first study to empirically evaluate and find support for the convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity of a Spanish version of the LibQUAL scale.
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In 2006/2007, the Canadian academic library community came together in the largest national LibQUAL+® consortium to conduct ARL library service quality survey. This paper aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
In 2006/2007, the Canadian academic library community came together in the largest national LibQUAL+® consortium to conduct ARL library service quality survey. This paper aims to address how and why the national consortial project came about, the challenges for recruiting and managing participants, and what was learnt, together with possible future directions.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a case study approach.
Findings
The research touches on the challenges planning and implementing LibQUAL+® with such a large, diverse consortium, with its bilingual mandate and multiple library types, and what made the project successful and its limitations.
Practical implications
The most apparent accomplishment of this project was successful collection of a large, diverse data set for comparative analysis of services and facilities – a meaningful data set both for individual libraries seeking appropriate Canadian comparators and for analyses by region, institutional categories, etc.
Originality/value
A valuable result of the project was to engage more Canadian academic libraries in the process of service assessment. CARL's bi‐lingual consortium approach will provide a valuable example for other national organisations attempting to carry out similar projects.
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Asefeh Asemi, Zahra Kazempour and Hasan Ashrafi Rizi
This paper aims to urge the new culture of assessment of the quality of library services among Iran academic libraries and to assess the overall services quality of libraries from…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to urge the new culture of assessment of the quality of library services among Iran academic libraries and to assess the overall services quality of libraries from the users' perspectives based on the LibQUAL model.
Design/methodology/approach
In this survey researchers used the LibQUAL model to assess service quality in the central libraries in engineering and technical governmental universities in Tehran city. For gathering data of libraries users, researchers used the LibQUAL questionnaire in a non‐electronic format and translated into Farsi.
Findings
It was found that library users were dissatisfied with their library building. But these libraries performed very well in the information control dimension. Furthermore, the examination of users' expectations showed that the proposition “Employees who are consistently courteous” was most important, and “Employees who instill confidence in users” had less importance.
Originality/value
Using the LibQUAL Survey has helped the university libraries in Iran to better serve their main user groups, and for the first time researchers used the non‐electronic format of LibQUAL questionnaire in the survey.
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The purpose of this paper is to establish a data mining model for performing sentiment analysis on open-ended qualitative LibQUAL+ comments, providing a further method for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish a data mining model for performing sentiment analysis on open-ended qualitative LibQUAL+ comments, providing a further method for year-to-year comparison of user satisfaction, both of the library as a whole and individual topics.
Design/methodology/approach
A training set of 514 comments, selected at random from five LibQUAL+ survey responses, was manually reviewed and labeled as having a positive or negative sentiment. Using the open-source RapidMiner data mining platform, those comments provided the framework for creating library-specific positive and negative word vectors to power the sentiment analysis model. A further process was created to help isolate individual topics within the larger comments, allowing for more nuanced sentiment analysis.
Findings
Applied to LibQUAL+ comments for a Canadian mid-sized academic research library, the model suggested a fairly even distribution of positive and negative sentiment in overall comments. When filtering comments into affect of service, information control and library as place, the three dimensions’ relative polarity mirrored the results of the quantitative LibQUAL+ questions, with highest scores for affect of service and lowest for library as place.
Practical implications
The sentiment analysis model provides a complementary tool to the LibQUAL+ quantitative results, allowing for simple, time-efficient, year-to-year analysis of open-ended comments. Furthermore, the process provides the means to isolate specific topics based on specified keywords, allowing individual institutions to tailor results for more in-depth analysis.
Originality/value
To best account for library-specific terminology and phrasing, the sentiment model was created using LibQUAL+ open-ended comments as the foundation for the sentiment model’s classification process. The process also allows individual topics, chosen to meet individual library needs, to be isolated and independently analyzed, providing more precise examination.
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The purpose of this paper is to describe how small, academic libraries may realize significant benefits from employing LibQual+TM as an assessment of customer needs and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe how small, academic libraries may realize significant benefits from employing LibQual+TM as an assessment of customer needs and expectations, stressing that these benefits may vary by the actual size of the institution.
Design/methodology/approach
Catawba College compared its experience utilizing LibQual+TM with that of Washburn University, reported by Dole as a small, academic library application of the survey. Catawba College is a private, liberal arts college that is much smaller than Washburn, with one‐quarter the student body and faculty. This paper examines the assessment experience of the two small institutions and compares the different advantages and disadvantages of using LibQual+TM within these two different types of small, academic institutions.
Findings
The study found that a larger response rate was realized than that of the larger of the two institutions, especially by faculty, and suggests that this is due to the nature of the small colleges where faculty and student body are more familial. The paper also describes LibQual+TM as a type of “turn‐key” survey process that is advantageous for small libraries with limited resources.
Originality/value
This paper provides new information on the value of LibQual+TM for assessment in small, academic institutions and describes the benefits of this assessment tool for libraries in much smaller settings.
Details