In Swedish
Quality survey at the Faculty of Science Library
For the first time, the Faculty of Science Library at Lund University has carried out a user survey to gain an understanding of users’ views on the quality of the library. The evaluation instrument LibQUAL+ was used for this.
The results are clear: users of the Faculty of Science Library are very pleased with the service they receive!
All staff and students linked to the faculty were invited to participate in the survey, which was carried out between 11 October and 11 November 2010. Almost 20 percent completed the questionnaire and 269 people also gave us valuable personal comments on their views of the library’s activities. The group with the highest number of respondents was Master’s and PhD students.
We would like to thank all those who took the time to respond to the survey and who offered valuable comments to help us further improve our activities!
LibQUAL evaluation instrument in brief
LibQUAL strives to measure service quality by ascertaining the difference between the users’ desired level of service and their actual perception of the service provided.
LibQUAL also provides a measure of users’ tolerance levels by finding out their minimum requirements and their desired level of service. In this way, we also get a relative value that shows how important the various parts of our activities are to the users.
The survey comprises 22 statements about the library’s services, which in turn are divided into three different dimensions: “affect of service”, “information control” and “library as place”.
LibQUAL is used by universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Australia, China, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden.
Information about LibQUAL can be found at
www.libqual.org
The results in brief
One advantage of using LibQUAL as our evaluation instrument is that we can compare our results with other university libraries worldwide.
In general, the library users at the Faculty of Science at LU are slightly more demanding than the global average, but also significantly more satisfied with the service and reception they receive from the library staff.
In terms of the library environment, the situation is the reverse. Staff and students at the Faculty of Science do not place as much importance on the premises as the average user, but the perceived quality is also somewhat lower. Both students and doctoral students would like to see better opportunities for group study and a more inspiring environment for study in general; the library is well located but not as well planned.
Information control, i.e. access to information and how easy it is to retrieve it through the library search system, websites, etc., is the part of the library’s activities which our users regard as most important, but also with which they are least satisfied. If we compare these results with the average and also look at the different user groups, there are certain differences. Our students’ views are in line with the global average in terms of how satisfied/dissatisfied they are with information control, while both doctoral students and researchers are significantly more satisfied with information control than the average. However, there is still room for improvement, in particular when it comes to the library website, search tools and access to journals.
Page Manager: Helena Bergqvist
Questions about the website: Web Group
Publisher:
Faculty of Science
Last modified 27 Mar 2012