How Library Contexts and Individual Attributes Shape Users'' Evaluation of Library Service Qaulity
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Lai, Li-Hsiang
Abstract
Library-oriented or objective evaluation and user-oriented or subjective evaluation are two major approaches to evaluate library service quality. However, less is known about the relationship between the results of the two evaluation approaches, particularly about the effects of library contexts on users’ subjective evaluation. The present study employs a combination of library- and user-oriented evaluation approaches to develop an integrated evaluation model of library service quality with multi-level and multi-dimension. Based on this evaluation model, the purposes of the present study are (1) to analyze whether users’ subjective evaluation of library service quality varies among user individuals and libraries, (2) to examine the effects of individual attributes and library contexts (service and structural context) on users’ subjective evaluation, (3) to diagnose if the relationship between users’ self-reported usage of and user satisfaction with a library is mediated by users’ perceived library service quality, and (4) to test how the mediated effects are influenced by the library contexts, if the relationship between users’ self-reported usage and user satisfaction is mediated by users’ perceived library service quality.he present study utilizes a cross-sectional survey designed to collect library and user level data respectively in 51 university libraries in Taiwan. There are eight factors of library level as library contexts. Six are indicators of objective, quantitative quality of library service context and two are variables of structural context. Library input and output data are standardized and weighted as six indicators of objective, quantitative quality of library service context: (1) manpower quality, (2) collection quality, (3) facility quality, (4) library visit quality, (5) circulation quality, and (6) support service quality. Two variables of library structural context are population size and public/private sector of a library. For the user level, there are six indicators of subjective evaluation and three individual attributes. Six indicators of subjective evaluation are (1) self-reported library use frequency, (2) library use width, (3) perceived content service quality, (4) perceived system service quality, (5) perceived support service quality, and (6) satisfaction. Individual attributes are user type (faculty and student), discipline (humanity, social science, and science) and self-efficacy. The sample size for the library level is 51 university libraries and for user level is 29,916 respondents from the faculty and students of the 51 universities. The hierarchical linear model (HLM) or multilevel analysis is utilized to estimate the effects of user-level and library-level factors on users’ six subjective evaluations.he findings show that users’ six indicators of subjective evaluation of library service quality vary among user individuals and libraries respectively, when there are no factors of user level or library level considered. More than 88% of the variance in users’ subjective evaluation is at the user level, while about 12% is at the library level. The findings also show that users’ six indicators of subjective evaluation differ by the level of users’ type, discipline and self-efficacy; but there is no self-efficacy difference in user satisfaction. Four of eight factors of library contexts (population size, manpower quality, facility quality and library visit quality) have significant effects on most of the users’ six indicators of subjective evaluation. User satisfaction is the most affected indicator by population size, facility quality and library visit quality. However, users’ perceived support service quality does not vary by the library contexts. Further analyses show that users’ perceived service quality (perceived content quality, perceived system quality and perceived support service quality) is the partial mediation between self-reported usage (library use frequency and use width) and user satisfaction. In other words, self-reported usage has direct and indirect effects on user satisfaction through perceived service quality. Users’ library use frequency positively affects user satisfaction, while users’ library use width has a negative effect on user satisfaction. Moreover, seven factors of the library contexts, except for collection quality, have effects on some of the partially mediated effects. The effect of users’ library usage on user satisfaction does not differ by the library contexts. Finally, the implications of these findings and needs for future research are discussed.
Subjects
Library service quality evaluation
User-oriented evaluation
Library-oriented evaluation
integrated evaluation
Library contexts
Individual attributes
Multilevel analysis
Type
thesis
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