Evaluation of library service quality using LibQUAL plus a comparative study of universities of North Western India

Abstract

The present study was conducted to evaluate the library service quality of nine state universities of North-Western India from users perspective. A stratified random sampling was applied to select respondents from the nine university libraries. The primary data was collected from the library users through a paper-version of LibQUAL+, a standardized survey instrument. A separate questionnaire was designed to collect additional data from librarians pertaining to infrastructure, human resources, collection, financial resources, ICT facilities and services offered by their respective university libraries. A total of 874 users responded to the questionnaire with an overall response rate of 77.55%. The results revealed that university libraries overall have performed better in Library as Place (LP) dimension (adequacy mean= 0.03) as far as users minimum expectations are concerned. On the other hand, service quality (SQ) of university libraries was found poor in Affect of Service (AS) and Information Control (IC) with adequacy mean of -0.09 and -0.54 respectively. However, the adequacy mean of AS dimension was slightly negative indicating that overall university libraries are very close to matching minimum acceptable SQ. It is clear that university libraries need to improve their services with respect to AS and IC dimensions, particularly IC dimension where they got highest negative adequacy and superiority gaps (-0.54; -1.98). Moreover, university libraries are still far away from the users desired SQ levels which makes them delighted. The study also provides certain suggestions to improve LSQ of specific attributes where service deficit occurred. newline