In the 2007 Winter Term, the Libraries invited faculty members and graduate and undergraduate students to complete the 2007 version of the LibQUAL+ survey. If you were among the 879 individuals who completed this survey, we thank you again for your time and thoughtful comments.

LibQUAL+ is a standardized survey that is used widely in North American academic libraries (and beyond) to measure library users’ perceptions of their library service.  Because we have run the survey before at York, most recently in 2004, we are able to see not only this year’s results, but to compare them to the 2004 York results: we are clearly perceived to have improved. Because this year we joined a consortium of other Canadian academic libraries, we are also able to compare York results with the aggregated results of other institutional groupings in the consortium: we have room for further improvement. 

Most respondents were evaluating their experience of Scott Library: 

• About 80% of respondents identified Scott Library as the library they primarily use
• about 15% identified the Steacie Science & Engineering Library
• the remaining 5% of responses concerned the Bronfman, Frost, and Law Libraries

The 22 core questions of the survey measure three library service quality dimensions: “affect of service” (satisfaction with interactions with library personnel), “library as place” (adequacy of study space), and “information control” (adequacy of print collections, online resources, and access to them).  Each question asks respondents to rate (a) the minimum level of service that they would consider acceptable, (b) the level of service that they would consider desirable, and (c) the level of service that they perceive themselves to be receiving currently.  The higher the “perceived” ratings are in relation to the “minimum” and “desired” ratings, the better.  An “adequacy gap”, where a “perceived” rating is lower than a “minimum” rating, and which is indicated in red on a radar graph, indicates an area with room for improvement.  Service is perceived as at least adequate where the “perceived” level of service exceeds the “minimum” level, and this is indicated in blue on a radar graph.

York’s 2007 results are more positive than results in 2004. Overall, faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students felt that their library service is better in all three areas (interactions, facilities, collections) than in 2004.  There are fewer “adequacy gaps” and in almost all of the 22 core questions the “perceived” mean scores were higher in 2007 for all three respondent groups than they were in 2004. Visually, less red and more blue is seen in the 2007 radar graph than in the 2004 graph. 

Could it be that the expectations of our users have simply become lower over time?  This seems unlikely given that for almost all 22 core questions across all respondent groups, the “minimum” and “desired” scores were also higher in 2007 than in 2004.

While the numerical LibQUAL+ scores do not tell us what may have improved in our users’ eyes, the 2007 survey responses included some 448 comments that give some sense of what our library users like or do not like.  These comments mention a number of improvements we have made since 2004: the renovation of the Steacie Science & Engineering Library, the creation of the Graduate Student Reading Room, the liberalizing of some circulation policies, the establishment of courtesy due date alerts on book loans, the expansion of our e-resources, the development of the Find it @York service, and so on. There were many positive comments about the helpfulness of our staff.

The largest number of non-positive comments concerned such areas as the quality and quantity of study spaces, the adequacy of our electronic and print resources, the quality of our book collection management, and the quality of our website.  

When we compare our general results with the aggregated general results of our peer libraries in CARL (the Canadian Association of Research Libraries — comprised of about 30 of Canada’s largest university and other research libraries) and in OCUL (the Ontario Council of University Libraries — comprised of all the Ontario university libraries), we see that in the aggregate, other libraries are perceived by their users as providing better service than York library users perceive that they are receiving at York. 

The major differences in results are in the “information control” (i.e., perceived adequacy of collections, access to online materials, website information) and “library as place” parts of the survey. The new Libraries strategic plan identifies the goal of enhanced print collections. We know from other measures that there is much pressure on our book collection: there are fewer books per student, for example, at York than at most university libraries.  We also know that we need to make improvements to our website (we have recently hired a Web Librarian to lead change in this area).  Importantly for our “library as place” scores, we know from gate counts that our libraries at York are much more heavily visited by our students and faculty than are the libraries at other institutions and we know that we have a lower number of study spaces in relation to the campus population than at most other universities.  We have been taking some steps to address this problem: this summer, for example we added added and upgraded many study spaces in Scott Library (see the article on our summer 2007 renovations).

LibQUAL+ has become a valuable assessment tool for the Libraries.  Through your survey responses, we can see clearly that you believe we have improved and you have indicated for us some key areas in which to focus future efforts.  Thank you!