This book has been co‐published simultaneously as Journal of Library Automation, Volume 40, Numbers 3/4 2004. LibQUAL+ is a web‐based survey tool developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in partnership with Texas A & M University Libraries which is designed to measure user's perceptions of library service quality. Each of the three Editors has had a significant involvement with the development and operation of LibQUAL+, two as employees of ARL and the third, Fred M. Heath, as the former Dean and Director of Texas A&M University Libraries and as a Past President of the ARL Board of Directors.
The introductory paper, written by Martha Kyrillidou and Fred M. Heath, explores the relationship between descriptive statistical library data and service indices obtained from LibQUAL+ survey results. Although some trends are identified, the discussion suggests that further analysis of both types of data from future years will be an important tool in the evolving understanding of the measurement of library effectiveness. The remainder of the book is divided into three sections, each containing several papers describing the use of LibQUAL+ results collected in 2002 by various types of libraries – Library consortia, Health libraries and University/College libraries. The authors of these papers represent a mix of library managers and practitioners from 14 North American academic libraries. Although each describes and discusses local data collection and analysis processes and issues, there are a number of common themes, the major ones being communication with library users, the incorporation of user feedback into library planning, the benefits of partaking in cooperative assessment methods and benchmarking. Several of the papers include detailed tables and charts, not only describing LibQUAL+ data, both quantitative and quantitative, but also the use of other measurement tools including focus groups, other surveys and statistics.
This collection of papers makes an important contribution to the current understanding of the measurement of library service quality in terms of data collection, data analysis and the subsequent use of the results to implement informed changes to library services, management and operations. Although they all cite LibQUAL+ as the source of at least some of the data, the principles of both data analysis and the incorporation of results into library strategic planning are applicable to data obtained using other measurement tools.
