It is fair to characterise LIBQUAL as one of the most prominent successes in recent years in the field of library and information management. During a span of a relatively short period it has been utilised in hundreds of libraries in the USA and in Europe.
It is common knowledge that the measurement instrument is based on the service quality theories and the measurement instrument known as SERVQUAL. LIBQUAL has been tested thoroughly in many different settings and it has changed quite a lot since the first edition. As the name states, LIBQUAL is dedicated towards the library sector. There is already a rather comprehensive literature about LIBQUAL and its development, the way it is validated and tested. Some of the literature is very technical because it uses advanced statistical analyses to develop and fine‐tune the instrument. Without doubt, the measurement instrument is solid and well designed for purposes of investigating users preferences, attitudes, perceptions, experiences and satisfaction with different aspects of the service delivery of libraries.
One of the problems with many user surveys has been the difficulty to interpret them as part of a more strategic action and use them accordingly. I think it is one of the strengths of this book that it also emphasise the organisational setting, staff attitudes and the like in the different presentations of the use of LIBQUAL. It means that the different papers touch upon questions relevant for nearly all quality measures and the use of these measures in a library setting.
The book consists of 15 papers. Together the papers give an introduction to the measurement instrument LIBQUAL and to the concept of service quality and user perceptions. It also introduces benchmarking and peer reviews. Some of the papers have good discussions of analyses of data, both quantitative and qualitative. The overall approach seems to be the employment of the tool in a strategic setting.
Professionals who have employed the LIBQUAL instrument in their libraries write the articles and all the authors obviously welcomed the instrument as a very convenient and cost‐effective way to survey users' perceptions and judgment of the services.
It is not possible to present every paper, but a few of the more interesting results can be outlined. In an introductory paper, it becomes clear that users' satisfaction with services do not correlate with traditional measures of quality such as the size of collection, number of staff and phenomena like these. It is another way of saying that LIBQUAL is a tool that is complementary to other kinds of measures of quality focusing on users perceptions and satisfaction.
LIBQUAL offers the possibility of including statements from the respondents and one interesting paper analyses the statements from several hundreds respondents. The analysis uses the grounded theory approach and it is a good example of how one can utilise comments given in questionnaires.
Another paper by Steve Hiller gives a very clear and instructive assessment of how the LIBQUAL is used to supplement the existing intensive and extensive assessment program and he states that it is just as important to identify not only deficiencies in the service program also service strengths.
All in all, it is a very useful book. It gives a good introduction to a standardised online measurement instrument and it also demonstrates how the use of the instrument can be incorporated to different strategic processes and how it can supplement existing measures. The book also gives information on a more generic level. It answers the question about the utilisation of user surveys in the library setting.
I would recommend the book as a fine introduction to the application of a widespread and well‐researched measurement instrument and as a more general introduction to libraries' experiences with the interpretation and use of survey data.
