MEASURING THE QUALITY OF LIBRARY SERVICES

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1: Background of the Study

Service quality and customers/students satisfaction have received a great deal of attention from both scholars and practitioners because of their relevance and relationship, according to Eshghi & Ganguli (2008) and the main reason for focusing on these issues is to improve the overall performance of organizations (Magi & Julander, 1996). Various studies have focused on customers/students satisfaction and others have dealt with service quality as standalone concepts, whereas others have focused on the link between service quality, effiency studies and best practices. Some studies have concluded that quality leads to satisfaction received from best practices, Negi (2009) and others support that satisfaction leads to quality (Cronin & Taylor, 1992). Others like Parasuraman et al. (1988) propose that quality and satisfaction are determined by the same attributes. Saravanan & Rao (2007) proposed that customer satisfaction is based on the level of service quality delivered by the service providers. These and many other studies confirm that there is a relationship between service quality , best practice and efficiency studies but according to Asubonteng et al., (1996), there is no agreement on the exact nature of this relationship. Asubonteng et al. (1996) however, agree with other researchers that the two concepts have attributes that are measurable. According to Cullen (2001), academic libraries are facing two main threats: a global digital environment and increasing competition. Cullen further argues that, the quality of an academic library has historically been described in terms of its collection and measured by the size of the library’s holdings and various counts of its uses. He continues to assert that such parameters have since been rendered obsolete due to the emergence of alternative and more efficient and effective approaches. One of the most significant trends in both private and public universities in Kenya in the recent past has been a rapid expansion to cater for the growing needs of new scholars. The introduction of Privately Sponsored Student Programmes (PSSP) has opened invaluable opportunities to those individuals who had attained the minimum university requirements but had no possibility of securing an admission because of the limited opportunities available in the regular/government funded programmes. This has however, resulted to a number of challenges because the increase in enrollment numbers has not been matched by the provision of adequate teaching and research facilities and resources (Abangi, 1995). As Rowley (2006) asks, ‘What is the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction?’ This question has not been addressed by many libraries and limited research in the field of Library and Information Science in the country has tackled it. It therefore raises many questions on the application of service quality models and user satisfaction surveys in libraries and information services among universities in Kenya.