Perspectives on User Satisfaction Surveys

ACADEMIC LIBRARIES ARE FACING TWO MAJOR THREATS: a global digital environment and increasing competition. They must improve the quality of their services in order to survive. The article explores the relationship between service quality and user satisfaction and examines how user surveys have been employed in a number of previously published data sets. A model which demonstrates how satisfaction can be seen as both a microlevel response to individual transactions and at the macro-level as an outcome of service quality is proposed. Using an evidence-based approach, gaps between user expectations and perceptions are explored as well as the gap between user expectations and managers’ perceptions of these. Studies that include user surveys of electronic library services are also analyzed in terms of customer expectations. Suggestions are offered about ways in which library and information service providers could make more use of the information derived from their own and other organizations’ user surveys to improve their services.

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