Establishing Quality in University Libraries: Role of External Frameworks

Academic libraries need to prove to themselves and their institutions that they are providing quality services for various reasons. There are drivers for continual improvement as well as showing impact and return on investment. The challenge is how to best approach determining the quality levels. Using in-house developed strategies is one way forward but another is to use external frameworks. The various issues in this approach will be explored using two very different external options (LIBQUAL+ and Customer Service Excellence - CSE). This discussion reflects some of the comments already made about CSE (Broady-Preston & Lobo, 2011). LibQUAL+ was developed in the USA by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) (2016) and is academic library specific. It provides a suite of services that libraries use to solicit, track, understand, and act upon users' opinions of service quality. CSE (Cabinet Office, 2016) was introduced in 2008 by the UK Government to “encourage, enable and reward organizations that are delivering services based on a genuine understanding of the needs and preferences of their customers and communities.” It is a generic framework and not university library specific.

Quality frameworks such as CSE and LibQUAL+ have the benefit of providing tried and tested structures for detailed quality assessment that are accepted and well regarded by the communities in which they are used. As its name suggests, Customer Service Excellence concentrates on customer service aspects and aims to test in depth the areas that research has indicated are a priority for customers. This is interpreted as focusing on delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism, and staff attitude. The process also tries to develop a customer insight by aiming to record and understand the user's experience in some detail. LibQUAL+ also has a strong customer emphasis, although it focuses specifically on libraries looking at the provision of library resources and the study environment as well as the more direct aspects of customer service. It uses a technique known as gap analysis to evaluate customer expectations as well as perceptions, in particular whether services in different areas are meeting, surpassing, or failing to meet customers' levels of expectation. Given its widespread adoption, LibQUAL+ provides a great potential for benchmarking and, through repeating surveys at intervals, the opportunity to identify trends in some detail. Although LibQUAL+ provides the possibility of adding locally based questions, additional local surveys may be needed to provide a comprehensive analysis or detailed investigation of particular topics. The criteria and approaches used by CSE have remained relatively static. LibQUAL+ has had greater development, including the testing and implementation of a confidential version of the survey allowing the data to be used for institutional analytics work. The framework and questions used by LibQUAL+ have proved remarkably resilient to the development of the digital library.

A key difference between LibQUAL+ and CSE is that one is very much focused on academic libraries (LibQUAL+) and the other is applicable for any organization (CSE). This contrasting direction does raise questions about which best meets the needs of the individual academic library. A crucial issue is around how the university library wishes to use the quality assessment outcomes. It may be that the imperative is to show to the wider university what the library is achieving and performing. In an increasingly customer driven higher education sector, being able to use CSE to demonstrate that the library is providing high quality, customer focused services (using a framework that is understood outside the library) could be a crucial decider (Cunningham, 2016). If the quality assessment is to provide a detailed analysis of library service provision that can be used to compare with other university libraries, then LibQUAL+ is more suitable. It is still possible for the university library to use the LibQUAL+ outcomes within the wider institution but there will be a need to educate and inform others about what LibQUAL+ is first. There is a both a strength and weakness in going for either the generic or the library focus framework. CSE can bring a perspective whereby library quality is interpreted in the wider context that LibQUAL+ cannot give. LibQUAL+ can provide an informed evaluation based around the Association of Research Libraries' detailed understanding of the library business.

One of the major differences between the two frameworks lies in their geographical coverage. CSE is UK-based which is entirely satisfactory for those institutions wishing to limit themselves to a national focus for quality assessment. In contrast, LibQUAL+ has its origins in North America but has now been used by over 2,600 institutions across 31 different countries on 5 continents. This will be particularly useful for research libraries wishing to benchmark themselves outside the United Kingdom to help their institutions become more competitive internationally.

Important considerations for any library will be the costs and workloads associated with the quality assessment. For CSE, there will be the cost of the assessment, the exact cost being dependent on the individual circumstances of the organization. For LibQUAL+, there will be the registration fee, membership subscription and any additional costs such as special analyses. The nature of the workloads associated with CSE and LibQUAL+ will be very different. For CSE, there will be a significant workload prior to the assessment in detailed preparation, with collection and collation of the evidence and creation of the documentary submission for the assessor, as well as the work involved in the on-site visit itself. There are also likely to be workloads associated in engaging library staff in the concept of CSE and involving them in the collection of evidence. The position with LibQUAL+ is very different. The survey is “bought in” and a minimal amount of local staff resource or technical expertise is required to administer it, with analysis and results provided by ARL. With LibQUAL+, the greater challenge is post-survey, with libraries needing to find time and resources to develop action plans and implement the changes required and to repeat the survey at intervals. For smaller libraries and for those with less staff and financial resource, a shorter form of the survey, LibQUAL+ Lite, has been developed by ARL (Thompson, Kyrillidou, & Cook, 2016).

Valid and reliable evidence has to be collected and used to inform the judgements around quality. The challenge is to use a range of different approaches to ensure there is a rich and detailed insight in measuring the quality. At the center of LibQUAL+ is a survey that evolved from a conceptual model based on the SERVQUAL instrument, a popular tool for assessing service quality in the private sector. After years of revision based on data collected from thousands of library users, the survey has evolved into a protocol consisting of 22 items that look at three aspects of customer service: affect of service, information control, and library as place. The survey contains additional items that address information literacy outcomes, library use, and general satisfaction. There is also an open-ended comments box and university libraries taking part in LibQUAL+ have the option to select five additional local questions to add to their survey. This provides opportunities for longitudinal benchmarking. CSE has a different approach and does not use a survey. There are 57 criteria matching areas of customer services with the participating university library submitting evidence showing how they meet the criteria prior to an on-site assessment. The assessor goes over the evidence and interviews university library managers, front line staff, partners, and customers. The evidence and the on-site visit are used to make judgements about whether the library is not compliant, partially compliant, compliant, or compliant plus for each of the criteria. The university library becomes CSE accredited if it meets a certain percentage of the criteria. Both approaches suffer from duplication with overlap in criteria (CSE) and repetition of questions (LibQUAL+). Knowles (2016) has provided a typical blog posting about what it means when a university library goes for CSE. It is primarily based on qualitative data whereas LibQUAL+ is a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative.

Use of quality frameworks can provide a number of opportunities for library staff, not least in helping to raise the profile of the library in the institution. CSE has the status of being a central government award and the benefit of being known and understood outside the library sector. The involvement of respondents across the institution in the LibQUAL+ survey and the independence of the analysis will help to gain acceptance and ownership of the survey and its results among university managers. This can help when the LibQUAL+ data is used by library managers in the development of business cases for library funding and development (Killick & Town, 2012, p. 31). Academic librarians are always keen to develop collaborative approaches with colleagues in other institutions and this is the case with both CSE and LibQUAL+. In the United Kingdom a support network, discussion list, and community has been built up involving those universities that have the CSE award. In the last decade, 75 UK and Irish institutions have used Lib QUAL+ and members of a SCONUL Consortium (Town, 2016, p. 212) have shared approaches, results and interpretations, organized meetings for training and helped to support institutions new to the survey. A subconsortium of Irish members has also been set up. Use of quality frameworks can also help with skills development among library staff. With CSE, individuals and teams can explore and acquire new capabilities in the areas of customer focus and customer engagement. With LibQUAL+, staff skills in dealing with data analysis and interpretation are enhanced. For both frameworks, the library staff involved in the quality work are building their knowledge/capacity for the development and delivery of improved services. Library staff involvement in the quality processes, particularly with the detailed preparation needed for CSE assessment, can help develop teamwork, collaboration, and the organizational culture.

The purpose of this editorial has not been to make judgements about whether LibQUAL+ or CSE should be the preferred framework when assessing quality customer services in university libraries. The decision on which framework to use will depend on factors including institutional and library priorities and strategies, costs, and staff resources. Some libraries, wanting to place a strong emphasis on quality assessment and having the necessary staff and financial resources, may decide to use both frameworks. As the University of York has demonstrated, the customer-focused attitudes and achievements developed during the use of LibQUAL+ can help the library achieve the CSE standard at a later stage (Town, 2016, p. 215).