Assessing Service Quality : Satisfying the Expectations of Library Customers

Academic and public libraries are continuing to transform as the information landscape changes, expanding their missions into new service roles that call for improved organizational performance and accountability. Since Assessing Service Quality premiered in 1998, receiving the prestigious Highsmith Library Literature Award, scores of library managers and administrators have trusted its guidance for applying a customer-centered approach to service quality and performance evaluation. This extensively revised and updated edition explores even further the ways technology influences both the experiences of library customers and the ways libraries themselves can assess those experiences. With a clear focus on real-world application, the authors Challenge conventional thinking about the utility of input, output, and performance metrics by suggesting new ways to think about the evaluation and assessment of library services Explain service quality and customer satisfaction, and demonstrate how they are separate but intertwined Identify procedures for qualitatively and quantitatively measuring both service quality and satisfaction Encourage libraries to take action by presenting concrete steps they can take to become more customer-centric Offer a range of customer-related metrics that provide insights useful for library planning and decision making, such as surveys and focus groups This book shows how to nurture an environment of continuous improvement through effective service quality assessment.

Peter Hernon is a professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College in Boston; he previously taught at the University of Arizona and Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He is the coeditor of Library & Information Science Research, founding editor of Government Information Quarterly, and past editor-in-chief of the Journal of Academic Librarianship. Hernon is the author of more than 285 publications and has received a number of awards for his research and professional contributions, including the 2008 Association of College and Research Libraries award for Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The first edition of this book, Assessing Service Quality, was the 1998 winner of the Highsmith award for outstanding contribution to the literature of library and information science.

Ellen Altman, now retired, was visiting professor in the Department of Library and Information Studies, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) until July 1997. She has been a faculty member at the Universities of Kentucky and Toronto and at Indiana University, professor and director of the Graduate Library School at the University of Arizona, and feature editor of Public Libraries, the official publication of the Public Library Association. Altman is coeditor of The JAL Guide to the Professional Literature in the Journal of Academic Librarianship, a member of Library Quarterly s editorial board, and a coauthor of Performance Measures for Public Libraries. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies in 1983.