The Libqual+ Approach : a Measure of Library User's Perceptions and Expectations of UST Miguel de Benavides Library Digital Services

Researcher: JULIET ESCALONA-PALISOC

Degree: Master of Arts in Library Science

School: University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

Subject Area: Library Services

Year of Graduation: 2007

Introduction

Library is a place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference or lending. The library may differ in many aspects but they all have the same objective, and that is to support the educational and research objectives of its parent organization. Nowadays, the library profession and the larger educational community are focusing their attention on service quality. With the increase in number of information resources and the student that it has to serve, the UST Miguel de Benavides Library was forced to make changes in providing services to clients. The library responds to the challenge of technology by introducing digital library services whose objective is to widen the range of information resources available and to add value to their content by making them accessible through telecommunication networks, so that users can access them anytime and anywhere.

Statement of the Problem

This study, entitled "The LibQual+ Approach to Measure the Library User's Perceptions and Expectations of Digital Library Services of the University of Santo Tomas Library", aims to find out if there are discrepancies as well as a significant difference between the expectations of library users and the actual quality of service present in digital library services offered.

Methodology

The respondents were composed of 285 undergraduate students, 35 graduate students, and 73 faculty members. The instrument used contained the following: a demographic profile questionnaire, a questionnaire adapted from the LibQual+, a customer satisfaction questionnaire, and open-ended questions asking for comments about the different digital library services currently offered. A 9-point Likert scale was used to determine the extent of the respondents' feelings towards the questions in the LibQual+ - based questionnaire, indicating their minimum, desired and perceived service levels. The data gathered was analyzed by tallying the comments about the services offered, as well as by plotting the means of answers to all questionnaire items in graphs. A t-test was also used to compute for the significant difference between responses.

Findings

Findings disclosed that there was no significant difference between expectations and actual quality of service. It was also found that there was a negative service superiority gap and a positive service adequacy gap present in the quality of service in the UST library. This implies that while the library is not meeting the desired level of quality of the clients, the service that they are providing is adequate enough to meet the minimum level of service wanted. On the whole, the library are quite satisfied with the services offered by the UST library, but there are some library services that still needs improvement.