Survey Goals

The goals for the 2010 survey were to:

• provide qualitative data on how best to focus library services to continue meeting the needs of the Queen’s community, particularly in this period of budget cutbacks and ever increasing fiscal constraint;
• help the Library better understand how groups within Queen’s community evaluate library services;
• allow the Library to compare Queen’s results with other university libraries to inform best practices.

Description of Survey

LibQUAL +™ is a web-based survey developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Its purpose is to provide libraries with a standardized, effective method to measure the quality of library services based on the perceptions of faculty, students and staff. More than 1,000 educational and research institutions in over 17 countries have participated in the survey.  The Library participated as a member of a Canadian consortium of 47 academic libraries, called LibQUAL Canada.

The survey questions are organized in three service dimensions: Affect of Service (client services); Library as Place (building and physical amenities); and Information Control (collections/resources and their access). Respondents were invited to add free-text comments after answering the questions. The library received comments from 806 individuals or 45% of all respondents.

Brief Summary of Findings

The Library received 1,802 valid responses to the survey in 2010, notably more than the 1,577 responses in 2007. In 2010, 48% of total respondents were graduate students, 23% of the total grad student population.  The results of the survey provided the Library with a rich source of information from our community which will help to inform the Library’s future service plans. The 2010 survey has also helped assess the effectiveness of changes introduced since the 2007 survey to improve our resources, services and facilities.

1. Overall

Queen’s overall service quality scores continue to exceed the mean aggregate scores of the Canadian LibQUAL Consortium in 2010, though it was slightly lower in 2010. This change in the service quality (Adequacy Gap) scores was largely due to higher overall minimum service expectations than in 2007. The Information Control service dimension (i.e., resources and access to resources) continues to generate the highest value ratings (what users want) and the lowest performance scores. While lower in value ratings, Library as Place continues to be Queen’s strongest service dimension in the survey with significantly higher aggregate scores than those of the Canadian LibQUAL Consortium.

Frequency in library resource use remained largely consistent between the 2007 and 2010 surveys.  The one notable change was a decrease in daily use of library resources on library premises, from 17.84% in 2007 to 11.81% in 2010, reflecting the increasing dominance of electronic resources.

2. Affect of Service (client services)

Queen's overall performance in this service dimension continued to be very strong in 2010, exceeding the aggregate scores for the Canadian Consortium (University Libraries). These scores were well supported by the many laudatory survey comments about Queen's library staff across the system.

As was the case in 2007, this dimension continues to rank between Information Control and Library as Place in relative importance, i.e. “Desired” level of service, except among undergraduates who ranked this service dimension below Library as Place.  Consistent with the aggregate scores from the Canadian Consortium (University Libraries), the question that continues to generate both the highest performance scores and the lowest value (desired) score in the entire survey is “Giving users individual attention.” Supported by the survey comments, these scores indicate quite clearly that users who have taken advantage of the library’s services were very happy with the Library’s customer services. However, the predominant desire among users continues to be “easy to use,” unmediated electronic services.

3. Information Control (resources & access to resources)

The Information Control service dimension remains the area of highest user demands and expectations, with the highest value ratings (what users want) and the lowest performance scores. This is in keeping with the prevailing trend among academic library participants in the survey. While Queen’s overall performance scores in this area remained relatively consistent since 2007, the aggregate Canadian consortial scores rose notably in 2010 and now exceed Queen’s aggregate results. Queen’s scores in 2010 were higher than the 2007 results among faculty and undergraduates but lower among graduate students.

While respondents generally praised the availability of the Library’s e-journal collections, one of the more common requests continues to be for more electronic journals. Responses were mixed regarding the value of e-books in 2010. The service quality scores also point to a major challenge faced by the Library in its program to improve online access to its resources. Not only was the overall service quality score for the question “Easy-to-use access tools that allow me to find things on my own” among the lowest in the entire survey, but it was lower in 2010 than in 2007. As in 2007, respondents from the sciences and applied sciences generated notably higher performance scores in this service dimension than those in the other discipline areas. 

4. Library as Place

While a little lower than in 2007, Queen’s service quality scores in this area continued to be high, exceeding those of the other Canadian Consortium members despite a significant improvement in the Consortium’s overall scores for this service dimension in 2010 over 2007. The lower service quality ratings in 2010 reflect the numerous comments about lack of quiet spaces, lack of sufficient group study space and overall lack of seating during exam periods, particularly in Stauffer. For the first time, undergraduates gave this service dimension a higher value rating than the other two service dimensions.

While the results showed that most campus libraries had primary users from other discipline areas, this is particularly true in Stauffer, where almost 1/3 of respondents who identified Stauffer as their primary library were from disciplines other than humanities/social sciences.