Measuring the Quality of Library and Information Services Dr.B.S.Biradar Professor

1. Measuring the Quality of Library and Information Services Dr.B.S.Biradar Professor Dept.of Lib.& Inf.Sc. Kuvempu University Jnanasahyadri- 577 451

2. Introduction • Today's marketplace companies are driven by the customer needs and expectations. • It is the companies responsibility to deliver product or services that satisfy the customers. • When company product does not match the customer expectations, the product does not sell. Then company use marketing gimmicks to market the product: • offer rebate • Increase sale commissions • Advertise the products/services • Examine the quality of product/services • Develop public relation

3. Major Objectives of the Library • To support the learning process of the PG & Research students through provision of information. • To meet information needs of the faculty to support their teaching activities. • To meet information needs of the faculty and research staff to support their research activities. • To respond effectively, where possible to the information needs of the Institute's client.

5. Stakeholders of the Library

6. What is Standard? • According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2009) Standards are defined as “something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality”.

7. What is quality? • The term 'quality' is often used in a vague, blurred way. If someone talks about 'working on quality', they may simply mean activities designed to improve the organisation and its services. • ‘conformance to requirements’ - Crosby • ‘fitness for use’ - Juran Quality answers two questions: ‘What is wanted?’ and ‘How do we do it?’ quality professionals specify, measure, improve and re-engineer processes to ensure that people get what they want.

8. What is quality? • Quality is essentially about learning what you are doing well and doing it better. It also means finding out what you may need to change to make sure you meet the needs of your service users. Quality is about: • knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it • learning from what you do • using what you learn to develop your organisation and its services • seeking to achieve continuous improvement • satisfying your stakeholders - those different people and groups with an interest in your organisation.

12. What is quality assurance? • Quality assurance is the process of verifying or determining whether products or services meet or exceed customer expectations.

13. What is the measurement of service quality? • Service quality focuses on the needs and expectations of customers to improve products and/or services. • The service quality measures the gap between the customer’s level of expectation and how well they rated the service(s). • Quality control is the system of continuous improvement. • It is a journey not a destination, so it must become a way of life.

14. Why measure service quality? • Meeting user needs • Costs/Budget/Space • Changes in the information discovery/use processes • Accountability to stakeholders, funding agencies • Breadth and depth; comprehensiveness • Environmental changes (social, information, technical) • Changes in publisher/vendor marketing and packaging • Return on Investment (ROI); contingent valuation

15. Why measure service quality? The benefits of measuring service quality include: • You will be able to identify where services need improving in the view of your users. • It will enable you to provide services that are more closely aligned with the expectations of your users. • To provide efficient and consistent services • It will allow you to compare your service quality with peer institutions in an effort to develop benchmarks and understand best practice. • they can work effectively with limited resources or short-term project funding.

16. What Do We Need to Know About Our Customers? • Who are our customers (and potential customers)? Identify actual and potential customers • What areas/fields/courses are they working in? Understand needs and use preferences • How do they work? What’s important to them? • How do they find information needed for their work? • How do they use our services? What would they change? • How do they differ from each other in use/needs? • Use funding and staff effectively • Understand and address “competition” • Encourage community involvement and “ownership” • Measure, demonstrate, present the value of the library to the community and stakeholders

17. Thinking Strategically About Library Futures • What is our central work and how can we do more, differently, and at less cost? • What important services do we provide that others can’t? • What advantages do we possess? • How is customer behavior changing? • How do we add value to our customers work? • How do we contribute to their success? • What are the essential factors responsible for library success now and in the future?

18. We should answer following questions? • Are we delivering the services? • Are we delivering Quality services? • Are we able to understand the needs of our clienteles? • How can we further improve our services to meet the customers expectations?

19. Vital Question of our (LIC Professional) existence depends on • Customers not only need SERVICE but it should be QUALITY SERVICE. • They are meticulous about their requirements • Their queries are becoming very complex.

20. What should I measure? • You first need to decide if you want to measure a specific aspect of your library and information service (e.g. the provision of information skills training) or the service as a whole? • If you are measuring the whole service, you will need indicators from each aspect of the service: e.g. inter-library loans, literature searching, enquiry handling, training etc.

21. Collection Development • Besides in-house materials, many libraries offering e-resources: • E-books • E-journals • Web portals • Consortia etc.

22. Evaluation of print and e-resources • Obtaining opinions of students and faculty members on the collection of books, periodicals and other reading materials in respect of content of syllabus.

23. Circulation • Circulation which was manual becomes automated. • Barcode technology introduced to bring perfection and speed at circulation center. • Transformation of card catalogue to OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) through which user can search it with all parameters like Author, Title, Subject and in addition to that he can search the catalogue through combination search, or use of Boolean operators like AND, OR. or NOT. User gets the information right at the OPAC terminal if the document required by him is presently issued out. His time can be saved. OPAC can be installed on any node within the campus and can be access through LAN. User need not come physically to the library for knowing the availability of the documents but they can access the resources from their respective desktops.

24. Document Delivery Service • Information Technology brought a revolutionary change in conventional services. • It increases the speed as well as accuracy in document delivery service. • User can get a printout of the relevant portion from the entire document. Online Database • Retrieval of the information from the printed material was too time-consuming, but the online databases of the periodicals made it so easy. • One can find out thousands of references on a particular term in just one click.

25. Experience 1 • students of our institute are facing pressure of submission of reports. Earlier they use to spent eight to ten days in searching the relevant information from entire back issues of the journals and use to prepare there project report within a day or two on the basis of there search. They even could not search all the bound volumes. But online databases give them much more and much relevant information within eight to ten minutes. And they can prepare there project report by focusing the right approach.

26. Resource Sharing

27. Experience 2 • One of the faculty members was looking for an article and he told me the reference. I (Sanjay) was chatting through messenger with one of my professional friend in Delhi and I pass it on to her through messenger. She was not having it in her library but her friend in Hyderabad was having it. She asks him to forward it to me. I got the reference just within five minutes. The faculty member who was there I ask him to check his mail for that article. He surprised by the speed and praise me like anything.

28. Current Awareness Services • Current Additions Information about the books added to the library during a month. • Current Contents Information about the content pages of the journals received by the library during a week.

31. Subject portal • Portal is a term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web • Subject Gateway: An online database of subject-specific links to resources which have been reviewed, usually subject-specific LIST SERVER A list server (mailing list server) is a program that handles subscription requests for a mailing list and distributes new messages, newsletters, or other postings from the list's members to the entire list of subscribers as they occur or are scheduled. • An automatic mailing list server. When e-mail is addressed to a LISTSERV mailing list, it is automatically broadcast to everyone on the list. The result is similar to a newsgroup or forum, except that the messages are transmitted as e-mail and are therefore available only to individuals on the list.

32. Examples of Virtual Library Reference Service • www.allexperts.com (Free ) :Limited to music questions • www.askanexpert.com (Free ) : Experts need have established for a particular subject Web site • www.expertcentral.com(Free ):More than 5,000 experts available to respond to your question. • www.webhelp.com (Free ) :People respond to questions • www.vrd.org/dig_ref.html (Free ) : People respond to questions • www.groups.yahoo.com/group/livereference (Free ) • Talk to Librarian Live: Give the what they already use : AOL Instant Messenger. Users AOL Instant Messenger (started in 2000) • Ask a Librarian :Austin Peay State University (Started in 2001) - Software used LiveAssistance • Refexpress – At the University of Florida: A Virtual Reference Desk (VRD) Based on Divine NetAgent, divine Inc.

33. A commercial VRS 100 answer agents Free for basic Qs, US$0.49 for AskAnything Beta test with 10,000 users Sign-up with cell phone (N. American wireless carrier) Call AskMeNow phone number with the cell phone Ask the Q Answer is text-messaged to your cell phone within minutes AskMeNow

34. Reference Kiosks National Library Board, Singapore Place Cybrarian Kiosks in the library so that users can ask librarians wherever they are in the library

35. A quote for reflection “The key feature of which measures we chose should depend on their ability to provide feedback on our goals, and the chances of achieving these goals in an effective and efficient way…So our measures should start at our goals, and force us to focus our attention to take action towards them.” Reflection questions on next slide…

36. Reflection questions • Think about the measures you currently use in your library and information service. These can be any type of measure, for example number of visitors, number of enquiries, any user surveys you have carried out etc. • What goals do each of these measures relate to? E.g. the purpose of a recent user survey was to gain user opinions in order to ultimately ensure the service meets their information needs. • Are there any measures that do not relate any particular goals? If so, what is the need for these measures? For example, you may be required to collect particular statistics to produce reports for stakeholders.

37. How do I measure it? Generally organisations use a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods: • Qualitative Methods: interviews, focus groups, observation . • Quantitative Methods: surveys (questionnaires, customer comments cards), statistics (routine data collection).

38. How Do We Get Customer Information? • Statistics/data mining (local, institutional) • Surveys • Focus groups • Observation • Usability • Interviews • Comments and suggestions.

40. How do I measure it? • There are also specific tools that can be used to measure service quality in organisations. For example: • ISO Standards • SERVQUAL • LibQUAL+ (specially for use in library and information services) • RATER scale.

41. A final reflection exercise… • There are ten general determinants of service quality that can be applied to most types of service. These are general criteria that can be used to assess the quality of service customers expect and receive. • The following determinants and examples are adapted from: Accounts Commission for Scotland (1999). Can’t get no satisfaction? Using a Gap Approach to Measure Service Quality [online] Available from: http://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/docs/local/2000/nr_000627_GAP_service_quality.pdf [Accessed August 2009].

42. Ten Determinants of Service Quality • Access - the ease and convenience of accessing the service(s). • Communication - keeping your users informed; listening to your users. • Competence - having the skills and knowledge to provide the service(s). • Courtesy - politeness, respect, consideration, and friendliness of staff at all levels. • Credibility - trustworthiness, reputation and image.

43. Reliability - providing consistent, accurate and dependable service(s); delivering the service that was promised. • Responsiveness - being willing and ready to provide service(s) when needed. • Security - physical safety; financial security; confidentiality. • Tangibles - the physical aspects of the service such as equipment, facilities, resources. • Understanding the customer - knowing individual customer needs.

44. Reflection • Before moving on to the next slide, consider the following: For each of the ten determinants of service quality, think of an example of what the determinant could apply to in your library and information service.

45. Examples • Access - convenient opening times; alternative methods to accessing services: e.g. telephone and internet/email. • Communication - “plain English” signs & pamphlets/guides; suggestions and complaints procedures. • Competence - all staff knowing, and able to do their job. • Courtesy - staff behaving politely and pleasantly. • Credibility - the reputation of the service in the wider community; staff generating a feeling of trust with users.

46. Reliability - standards defined in local service charters; accuracy of information provided; doing jobs right first time; keeping promises and deadlines. • Responsiveness - resolving problems quickly; allowing users to book an “appointment” for help (e.g. in literature searching, reference management etc.) • Security - ensuring service meets health and safety requirements, for staff and users. • Tangibles - up to date equipment and resources. • Understanding the customer - tailoring services where practical to meet individual needs.

47. Quality: stakeholders view • Access to information world wide • Delivery of information to the desktop • Speed of delivery • Responsiveness of staff • Reliability of services • Cost effectiveness • High reputation of the library • Good working condition • Systematic staff development Not all of these issues may be aspect of quality, but they are important for maintaining quality