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1. Introduction and background
Libraries are seen as the learning organization stimulating academic and research activities by providing access to world-class information resources. Since academic libraries strive to meet and satisfy professional needs of their users, it is therefore important to know the quality of their performance and how well users perceive their services. Librarians have struggled for many years with the challenge of demonstrating the quality of the service they provide ([6] Broady-Preston and Preston, 1999). Meanwhile library customers become more discriminating in demanding higher quality services. Such services enhance profitability, improve productivity, and contribute to competitive advantage. Librarians therefore, must supplement considerations of efficiency and economy with "behavioral" values, such as perceived quality, customer satisfaction (CS), perceived value, and customer loyalty. The success of this depends on customers' perceptions or judgment on the quality of services provided by the library, and service quality is the measure of how well the services delivered meet customer expectations. It is also recognized that high-quality service is essential for the success of organizations ([25] Parasuraman et al. , 1988; [19] Mangold and Babakus, 1990; [28] Rust and Oliver, 1994).
2. Background of the study
Historically the quality of an academic library has been described in terms of its collections and measured by the size of the library's holdings and various counts of its usage. But, such traditional assessment of library service quality has been such a questionable agenda that measurement of library service quality based solely on collections has largely become obsolete. "SERVQUAL," an alternative approach to measure service quality for business sectors was developed by marketing researchers [25] Parasuraman et al. (1988), and has been significantly shifted to the assessment of library service quality among academic, public, and special libraries ([14] Hernon, 2002). This study used an adapted version of SERVQUAL to examine the perceived service quality (PSQ) associated with users' satisfaction of each service item provided by Dhaka University Library (DUL).
The University of Dhaka, established in 1921, is the oldest and largest premier public university in Bangladesh. The University Library started its operation on July 1, 1921, and operates from three different buildings across the campus. Its collection of over 617,000 volumes is the largest in Bangladesh, covering all academic subjects except engineering and...