A Comparison With Our Peer Institutions:
Library Users Speak Up
Mary Meernik
Assessment Librarian
The previous five LibQUAL survey articles, available on
the library’s Web site at http://www.emich.edu/halle/libqual.html ,
examine the quantitative data according to EMU user group
and discipline. It is important to disseminate the survey
results to inform the entire university community about
those service areas where library users give us positive
feedback as well as those areas where service quality falls
below users’ expectations. We are currently analyzing
the data and making comparisons with five peer institutions
that also participated in LibQUAL. We need to not only
determine which library services are of most and least
importance to library users but to also identify patterns
of satisfaction and dissatisfaction across user groups
at all six libraries. Analyzing the LibQUAL data can be
challenging because some questions are open to varying
interpretations, making it difficult to draw any substantive
conclusions (see http://www.emich.edu/halle/libqual_questions.html for
the survey questions). For example, when patrons are asked
if the library successfully makes electronic resources
accessible from their homes or offices, do negative scores
reflect more on the type of computer or connection being
used offsite than on factors controllable by the library?
We did discover that all groups of EMU library users
have higher minimum standards than do library users not
only at our peer institutions but also at college and university
libraries overall. In addition, our users have higher desired
levels of service than do library users at four of our
five peer institutions. Do our library users have significantly
higher, but perhaps unrealistic, expectations because of
Eastern’s proximity to major research universities?
Is there any correlation between the dissatisfaction of
our graduate students and whether they obtained a bachelor’s
degree from one of those institutions? Likewise do faculty
respondents fault our collections because of their familiarity
with the extensive research collections of our neighbors?
Do library users simply expect better service because of
our state-of-the-art facility? Or does the new building’s
automated retrieval system, which allows us to store many
books instead of having the materials on open shelves,
actually alienate some of our clientele who prefer to browse
the collections? One of the advantages of participating
in a national survey of library users is to obtain benchmark
data enabling comparisons with peer institutions and to
identify the best practices of those libraries where patrons
are more satisfied with the quality of services. Looking
at the minimum and desired service levels for LibQUAL’s
25 core questions, we see some interesting disparities
between the expectations of our library users and those
of patrons at our peer institutions. This article will
examine survey results for undergraduates, graduate students
and faculty; the other two user groups (university staff
and library staff) were not surveyed at all of our peer
institutions. Note: LibQUAL rules stipulate that while
we can discuss other institutions’ survey results,
we cannot publicly reveal the names of those institutions.
Undergraduates
In each of the four dimensions or facets of library service,
EMU undergraduates have substantially higher minimum and
desired standards than do undergraduates at our peer institutions.
When our undergraduates’ higher expectations are
factored in with their lower perceptions of service quality,
the result from their perspective is a library that either
fails to meet or just slightly exceeds minimum standards
in all but the Library as place dimension. Undergraduates
at four of our peer institutions believe that their libraries
surpass minimum standards on all 25 questions while undergraduates
at the fifth institution report that library services fall
below minimum expectations on only two questions in the
Library as place dimension.
On the Access to information questions, Eastern’s
undergraduates perceive that the library does not meet
minimum standards in providing the print resources they
require. In fact, based on their minimum and desired expectations,
our undergraduates consider print and electronic book collections
to be the most important services in this dimension. Our
undergraduates and those at four of our peer institutions
consider print and electronic journal holdings to be of
lesser importance, in terms of their minimum standards,
than not only the other services in this dimension but
also in comparison to most of the services covered by the
entire survey. Among our undergraduate classes, there are
just slight variations in minimum expectations regarding
journal collections, but desired expectations do start
increasing by junior year. Another question in the Access
to information dimension asks about convenient service
hours. It is very interesting that despite all their LibQUAL
and suggestion box comments about extending library hours,
our undergraduates actually place less importance on this
service than do undergraduates at the other five institutions.
In fact, these undergraduates all report library hours
to be their number one priority in this dimension, and
undergraduates at four libraries rank it either first or
second highest for desired service level among all 25 core
questions. Note: The Halle Library is open 108.5 hours
per week; two peer libraries are open 95.5 hours per week;
one is open 99 hours per week; one is open 99.5 hours per
week; and one is open 81 hours per week but has a 24 hour
study area/computer lab.
EMU undergraduates are not satisfied with the quality
of the library’s customer service; we fail to meet
their minimum standards in four out of the nine questions
in the Affect of service dimension. This is particularly
troublesome considering that they have relatively low minimum
expectations to start with. Undergraduates at all six institutions
place the least importance, among all 25 core questions,
on two questions in this dimension – how successful
are library employees in instilling confidence in users
and are patrons satisfied with the level of individual
attention they receive. In this dimension, all undergraduates
feel it is very important to have library employees who
are consistently courteous and who have the knowledge to
answer users’ questions.
Undergraduate students at five institutions, including
EMU, give their libraries high marks in the Library as
place dimension. The library that does fall slightly below
its undergraduates’ minimum standards on two questions
was in the planning process for a new building at the time
of the survey. In this dimension, all undergraduates place
the least importance on access to community space for group
learning and group study. Instead, they prefer to use the
library as a quiet space for individual activities which
also explains their desire for extended hours. Undergraduates,
particularly those living in dorms, should have 24 hour
access on campus to a comfortable and secure place with
computers and quiet study areas. However, it simply is
not economically feasible to keep a large library building
open such hours to accomplish this objective.
Our peer institutions exceed the minimum standards of
their undergraduates on all six questions in the Personal
control dimension; Eastern fails to meet its undergraduates’ minimum
expectations on one question providing easy-to-use
access tools that enable users to find information on their
own. Our undergraduates express the highest minimum and
desired expectations of the entire survey on the services
in this dimension, placing the most importance on modern
equipment in the library and remote access to electronic
resources. Undergraduates at the other institutions feel
that a library Web site that facilitates independent use
of information is the most important service in this dimension.
All undergraduate respondents consider convenient access
to collections to be the least important aspect of Personal
control. The LibQual survey also includes three questions
concerning general satisfaction with library services and
five questions dealing with information literacy outcomes.
In contrast to our peer institutions, Eastern receives
negative feedback from its undergraduates on the general
satisfaction questions regarding how well they perceive
they are being treated, support for their learning and
research needs, and the overall quality of library service.
The results from the information literacy questions reveal
that undergraduates overall think the library is most successful
in enabling them to be more efficient in their academic
pursuits and least successful in helping them to distinguish
between trustworthy and untrustworthy information and in
helping them to keep current with developments in their
field(s) of interest. When examining undergraduate responses
to all survey questions, it is useful to take into account
how frequently they actually use library resources either
on the premises or through the library’s Web page.
64% of EMU undergraduates come to the library to use its
resources on a daily or weekly basis and 58% remotely access
resources from the library’s Web site on a daily
or weekly basis. These usage statistics compare very favorably
to those of undergraduates at our peer institutions. Our
undergraduates use the library and its resources more frequently
than the undergraduates at three of our peer institutions
use their libraries and our students’ usage equals
that of undergraduates at the other two institutions.
Graduate Students
The minimum and desired service quality expectations
of Eastern’s graduate students are more in line with
those of their peers than is the case with our undergraduates.
However, EMU graduate students are very critical in their
perceptions of library service quality in all but the Library
as place dimension. Our graduate students report that the
library fails to meet their minimum service standards in
17 out of the 25 core survey questions. Graduate students
overall are not that difficult to please; one of our peers
receives only one negative score, two institutions receive
three, and another four. These libraries’ negative
scores are primarily in the Access to information dimension.
Although graduate students at the fifth institution report
that their library fails to meet minimum standards on 21
questions, their worst assessments of library service quality
are in the Library as place dimension. Such poor evaluations
in this area could be negatively impacting their perceptions
in the other dimensions.
It is difficult for libraries to meet graduates students’ needs
in the Access to information dimension. As mentioned above,
this is the one dimension where four of our peer institutions
fail to meet their graduate students’ minimum expectations
in some areas. Graduate students at the fifth institution
report that their minimum standards are unmet on all five
questions. Eastern’s graduate students give the library
failing marks on all questions except convenient service
hours. Taking into account both minimum and desired levels
of service, graduate students at all six institutions place
the most importance on electronic information resources.
Graduate students overall report low minimum standards
for convenient service hours and for journal collections.
However, because of poor opinions of their libraries’ print
and electronic journal holdings, graduate students report
sizeable negative gaps not only between their perceptions
and desired expectations but also between their perceptions
and minimum expectations.
Our graduate students are extremely dissatisfied with
the library’s customer service quality; in the Affect
of service dimension, the library fails to meet their minimum
standards on seven of the nine questions. Graduate students
at all but one of our peer institutions report that customer
service at their libraries exceeds their minimum expectations
by wide margins on all questions. As is also the case with
our undergraduates, our graduate students actually have
very low minimum standards in this area so it is disturbing
that they perceive such disparity in the service they feel
we are providing compared to both their minimum and desired
levels of service. At all six institutions, graduate students,
like undergraduates, feel that the abilities of library
staff to instill confidence and to provide individual attention
are the least important aspects of customer service. Our
graduate students give these two questions their lowest
minimum and desired expectations of all 25 survey questions
and these are the only two questions in this dimension
where they perceive that we slightly exceed their minimum
standards. There is some variation in which aspects of
customer service are most important to graduate students
overall. Our students and those at two of our peer institutions
give first priority to library employees having the knowledge
to answer questions and second to employees who are consistently
courteous. Besides having knowledgeable library employees,
graduate students at the other three institutions also
feel that willingness to help users is very important.
In terms of their perceptions falling short of minimum
and desired expectations, our graduate students are most
dissatisfied with library employees’ dependability
in handling users’ service problems, readiness to
respond to questions, and knowledgeableness to answer questions.
Graduate students at five institutions, including Eastern,
give their libraries high marks in the Library as place
dimension. Graduate students at all six libraries place
the least importance on access to community space for group
learning and group study; in fact, this ranks as the least
important service of the entire survey for graduate students
at four of the libraries. In this dimension, all graduate
students place the most importance on the library functioning
as a getaway for study, learning and research.
Graduate students believe that the services covered by
the six questions in the Personal control dimension are
more important than those covered in the other dimensions.
Unfortunately, our graduate students report that the library
fails to meet acceptable standards on all six questions.
Making electronic resources accessible from home or office
is the first priority for graduate students at four institutions,
including Eastern. In addition to our library, three others
also fail to meet their graduate students’ minimum
expectations for this service. A library Web site that
enables students to find information on their own is the
top priority of graduate students at the other two libraries
and is ranked second by graduate students at three institutions.
Our graduate students rank this as their third priority,
just behind modern library equipment that allows them to
easily access needed information. Based on the disparities
between their perceptions and expectations, the two most
significant problem areas in this dimension for our graduate
students are the lack of easy-to-use access tools allowing
them to find things on their own and the difficulty of
accessing electronic resources off library premises.
Our graduate students’ responses to the three general
satisfaction questions and the four questions dealing with
information literacy outcomes definitely reinforce the
conclusion that these students are displeased with library
instruction, services and support. Eastern receives lower
scores from its graduate students than four peer institutions
receive from their students. The critical opinions of our
graduate students may be negatively affecting their usage
of the library and its resources. 47% of our graduate students
come to the library to use its resources on a daily or
weekly basis which is 7% less than the average at our peer
institutions. 67% of our graduate students remotely access
resources from the library’s Web site on a daily
or weekly basis which is 9% less than the average at our
peer institutions.
Faculty
Faculty respondents at all six institutions are the most
dissatisfied with the services covered by the questions
in the Access to information dimension. Our library fails
to perform up to faculty’s minimum standards on four
of the five questions. In comparison, two libraries received
negative scores on two questions, two libraries received
negative scores on three questions, and the sixth fails
to meet minimum standards on all the questions. In this
dimension, faculty respondents overall report the greatest
level of satisfaction with convenient library hours, the
result of low minimum standards combined with relatively
high perceptions of current service quality. Faculty library
users, like undergraduates and graduate students, have
very low minimum expectations for print and electronic
journal collections. Unfortunately their perceptions of
journal collection quality fall substantially below both
their minimum and desired standards. Consequently, faculty
considers journal collections to be the most problematic
service area in this dimension. Another source of dissatisfaction
for faculty is print resources. Looking at the six institutions,
there is interesting divergence in how faculty ranks the
importance of Access to information services. EMU faculty
feels that electronic resources are the most critical in
terms of both minimum and desired expectations. Faculty
respondents at only one of our peer institutions report
similar opinions. Faculty at three institutions thinks
timely document delivery/interlibrary loan is the most
important. (In fact, one institution’s faculty considers
this to be the most important service covered by the survey.)
Faculty library users at the remaining institution report
that print collections are their top priority.
Faculty respondents at four institutions are very pleased
with customer service quality; three libraries exceed minimum
expectations on all nine questions in the Affect of service
dimension and another receives only one negative score.
Our library fails to meet its faculty’s minimum standards
on three questions and the sixth library receives four
negative scores. Overall the least important aspects of
customer service for faculty are the ability of library
staff to instill confidence and to provide individual attention.
These are also the aspects that faculty is the most satisfied
with. Looking at minimum and desired expectations, faculty
places a premium on the following library staff attributes
(in order of importance): knowledge to answer users’ questions,
readiness to respond to questions, courteousness, and dependability
in handling service problems. It is this last service that
is the greatest source of dissatisfaction for faculty at
three institutions, including Eastern.
As might be expected considering the scores given by
undergraduates and graduate students, faculty respondents
at five institutions give very high ratings in the Library
as place dimension. Our faculty even reports that the library
comes close to meeting its desired expectations. As is
also the case with undergraduates and graduate students,
faculty considers the provision of community space for
group activities to be the least important aspect of Library
as place. Faculty does place a premium on library environments
that are comfortable and inviting and that are conducive
to study, learning and research. The only faculty to give
its library all negative scores in this dimension is the
most dissatisfied with these two building characteristics.
In the Personal control dimension, only one library exceeds
the minimum expectations of its faculty on all six questions.
Our library fails to meet the minimum expectations of faculty
on five questions and only barely exceeds acceptable standards
on the question regarding modern equipment in the library.
However, we are not alone in experiencing such dissatisfaction;
one library also receives negative scores on the same five
questions and another receives negative scores on all six
questions. The two remaining libraries fail to surpass
minimum standards on one question making electronic
resources available from home or office. This service is
judged by faculty at four institutions, including Eastern,
to be the most important not only in this dimension but
also in the entire survey. Next in importance for these
four groups of faculty is a library Web site that enables
users to access information on their own. Faculty respondents
at the remaining institutions consider a top quality library
Web site to be the most important aspect of Personal control.
In terms of minimum standards, the least important service
for faculty is convenient access to library collections;
interestingly, the desired level of service here is relatively
high. Eastern’s faculty actually reports that the
library falls below its minimum standards in providing
convenient access to collections (perhaps an issue with
the automated retrieval system). Faculty overall is the
most satisfied by modern library equipment that allows
users to easily access information. At four institutions,
faculty expresses the greatest degree of dissatisfaction
with remote access to electronic resources. Although faculty
respondents at the other two institutions, including Eastern,
are also unhappy with this service, they perceive the absence
or inadequacies of easy-to-use access tools to be more
problematic.
In terms of the general library satisfaction questions,
Eastern’s faculty is less satisfied with the treatment
and support and with the overall quality of service it
receives than faculty at three of our peer institutions.
This same ranking also holds true for the five information
literacy outcomes questions. Faculty respondents at all
six institutions are the most satisfied with their libraries’ ability
to help them be more efficient in their academic pursuits
and are the least satisfied with their libraries’ ability
to help them distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy
information. 33% of our faculty respondents come to the
library to use its resources on a daily or weekly basis
which is 9% less than the average at our peer institutions.
66% of our faculty accesses resources through the library’s
Web site on a daily or weekly basis which is about the
average for faculty at our peer institutions.
Conclusion
It is a useful exercise to identify commonalities among
library users at different institutions in terms of which
services are considered to be of lesser and greater importance.
If library users overall express significantly lower minimum
and desired expectations for particular library services,
it is not cost effective to expend scarce resources in
those areas (unless, of course, users’ perceptions
fall below acceptable standards). For example, although
some group study rooms are essential, it is apparent that
all user groups prefer more individual and quiet study
areas. Extending service hours, a low user priority overall
and a very costly prospect, may also be far less beneficial
than improving remote access to library resources, which
is a top priority across all user groups. If patrons universally
report that certain services are very important to them,
libraries need to focus on these areas, making sure that
perceptions of service quality exceed at the very least
the minimum expectations of users. While this is the case
at four of our peer institutions, our library faces some
daunting challenges. Substantial numbers of our users report
that the quality of many library services is less than
adequate. While the significance of small negative gaps
between users’ perceptions and minimum expectations
can undoubtedly be debated, that is really not the issue
here. What is troublesome is not the size of the gap but
that there is any gap at all. Whenever a survey respondent
perceives that the quality of a library service does not
meet his or her minimum standards, we need to find out
why and take corrective action.
We can also identify commonalities in satisfaction and
dissatisfaction with library services. Are there some services
that library users seem to be universally dissatisfied
with and may therefore be the most difficult to improve?
This is especially true in the Access to information dimension
which focuses on collections. With dwindling budgets and
escalating costs, libraries are rapidly losing ground in
equitably allocating funds between journal and monograph
collections and between print and electronic resources.
Because we can only purchase a small fraction of the materials
our users would like, we must expand and market our resource
sharing capabilities. In this respect, the responses to
the survey question about interlibrary loan/document delivery
are enlightening; at three institutions, ILL/DD is presumably
a high profile service because of its priority ranking
by faculty library users. On the other hand, many of Eastern’s
survey respondents did not even answer the question, which
probably indicates that our library users are not well
informed about and therefore not utilizing this valuable
service.
In contrast to the Access to information services, it
is not difficult for libraries to satisfy users’ expectations
in the Library as place dimension. If a library building
is relatively appealing and does not have any serious deficiencies,
patrons do not take much notice of physical and environmental
factors. If, however, a library building evokes negative
reactions, it can have a detrimental impact on users’ perceptions
of service quality which extends beyond dissatisfaction
with the building itself.
Where our library can definitely benefit from the best
practices of peer institutions is in customer service quality.
It is the area most under a library’s control and
therefore the most amenable to improvement. We need to
learn about staff training and development programs from
those libraries that are excelling in areas where we are
experiencing the most problems – staff knowledgeableness,
courteousness and dependability.
The services covered by the Personal control dimension
are the most challenging to fulfill in terms of accommodating
the preferences of all library users. Personal control
by its name implies that library users prefer to function
independently whether they are using materials onsite or
are accessing resources remotely. This is probably the
case for many patrons, and so for them, libraries need
to make the process of identifying, locating and accessing
resources as intuitive as possible. Judging from survey
respondents at all six institutions, dependable remote
access to electronic resources is absolutely essential
as is a well designed and user friendly Web site that can
serve as the gateway to these resources. Some of our users,
however, prefer to have library staff always available
to help them locate and access information. We learn from
survey comments that they are not interested in mastering
the intricacies of electronic databases, especially if
their use of such resources is infrequent, and they do
not make use of print and online finding aids. We cannot
assume that personal control is the goal of all library
users; instead, we must work to identify and meet the needs
of patrons who run the gamut in their comfort level.
With universities now stressing the importance of learner
centered education, academic libraries can no longer be
content with a supporting role in this mission but must
themselves demonstrate the ability to directly impact student
learning outcomes. LibQUAL’s information literacy
outcome questions, albeit somewhat simplistic, do seek
feedback from library users on this issue. Although our
library’s scores are disappointing, the scores of
our peer institutions are not particularly impressive,
generally ranging from an average of 5 to 6.5 on a scale
of 1 to 9 (with nine being the most satisfactory). All
six libraries are judged to have the least success in teaching
their users how to distinguish between trustworthy and
untrustworthy information. This may be an inevitable consequence
of our users frequently bypassing library services and
resources in favor of using Internet search engines to
obtain information. Survey respondents in all user groups
turn to such sources with much greater frequency than they
visit the library or use its resources. According to the
survey, 60% of respondents, on average, use non-library
gateways on a daily basis for their information
needs. Although directly searching the Internet is perfectly
valid for some types of information, it should not be the
principal interface for academic library users and it represents
a competition that we cannot afford to lose. Libraries
absolutely must work together to implement resource sharing
on a large scale (i.e. Michigan eLibrary Project) and to
make access to all their resources as easy and seamless
as possible. Maybe then we can gain the reputation as one
stop resource shops for our university communities.
As was mentioned in the previous articles, we want to
flesh out our LibQUAL data to obtain more usable information
about patron needs. Focus groups and surveys targeted to
our various constituencies will enable the library to address
the specific needs and concerns of each user group. Because
graduate students are the most dissatisfied, we are starting
the process with them. However, your feedback about library
services and resources is always welcome, and we also want
to hear from those of you, who for whatever reason do not
use our facilities and collections. Please make use of
our suggestion forms (inhouse and online) or let us know
if you would like to participate in an upcoming focus group.
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