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ABSTRACT
THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES SERVICE QUALITY AND IDENTIFIES issues meriting attention. The purpose is to guide the next generation of research on service quality in libraries and to ensure that the research has value to library planning and decision making. The difficulty of developing a process of data collection across institutions is also discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Over the years, those writing in the literature of library and information science (LIS) about quality have defined it differently. They have stressed the importance of developing and maintaining quality collections, have equated effectiveness (the extent to which goals and objectives are set and met) with quality, and looked at quality from the organizational perspective-that of the academic library or the parent college or university. As libraries embraced total quality management (TQM), other quality management styles (e.g., continuous quality improvement), and a culture of assessment, a number of them increased their commitment to support a customer orientation and to have customers who are satisfied with the service provided. It was only a matter of time before the concept of customer service, a concept independent of (and predating) TQM, was adopted and modified from the private sector. Customer service encourages retail and other organizations to meet or exceed those customers' expectations central to their mission, vision, goals, and objectives. In other words, the organization's vision of its service role (and its inability to do everything for everyone well despite its best intentions) ultimately guides what services are provided and how they are offered. Service quality, in effect, draws on TQM and customer service as well as on marketing research. Fundamental to service quality is the belief that an organization exists to serve its customers, that is if it intends to survive and flourish in a highly competitive and ever-changing market. Service quality stresses that customers are worth listening to and that they are the best judges of the quality of the services they use.
The purpose of this article is to examine the concept of service quality in libraries-an environment that differs from the retail sector where service quality so often has been studied and the findings incorporated into practice. The article identifies some issues meriting attention, advances an understanding of the concept, and analyzes how to measure service...