Service Quality Improvement Council

Minutes
March 8, 2000

Present: Katie Bauer, Emily Horning, Kenny Marone, Fred Martz, Danuta Nitecki, Andy Shimp, Martha Smalley, Paul Stuehrenberg, Joan Swanekamp

Absent: Sue Crockford-Peters, Suzanne Eggleston, Sandy Peterson, Rich Richie

The meeting commenced at 3:07 p.m.

I. Questions, announcements, future agenda topics.

1. Danuta Nitecki announced that Holly Grossetta-Nardini has accepted the offer of the position of Service Quality Support Director. She will begin her duties on July 3, 2000.
   

2. Danuta asked that SQIC members participate in a visit by Dan Seymour (writer and faculty member in the California university system who has done much to introduce the idea of quality improvement into higher education) on April 14th. Mr. Seymour will meet with the Council in a consultative capacity to work out a service quality improvement program for YUL. Danuta will forward background information before the visit.

II. Service Quality Improvement Awards. SQIC reviewed the program's implementation strategy in Sandy Peterson's absence. It was decided to

• Appoint a committee to serve as the Recognition Team and charge it with planning an event for Fall 2000. Paul Stuehrenberg distributed a list of Team nominees he received to date. A final call for other nominees was made. It was agreed to send votes for membership to Jeongmin Park by Friday, 3-10; the ballots will be counted the following Monday. Membership will be based on a plurality (rather than a majority) of votes received.

• Forward the program proposal to LMC for consideration at the 3-15 meeting.

• Have the Recognition Team address the question of whether (and how) to recognize students posthumously.

III. Extreme Weather Policy. Paul distributed copies of the revised Extreme Weather Policy and asked for comments. Suggestions included:

• Rewording the introductory paragraph to more clearly identify the text as a library system-wide policy

• Giving the policy a title (Proposed: "Yale University Library Extreme Weather & Emergency Closing Policy")

• Providing a more standardized definition of who is to be designated "essential" staff in case of a severe weather crisis; it was agreed to leave the responsibility of identifying essential staff to the department supervisors

• Altering the term "non-essential" to "non-emergency"

• Placing the description of the extreme weather/emergency scenario first and then outlining the services to be provided in that situation

• Changing all instances of "interim sessions" to "when classes are not in session"

Paul will revise the document and forward to LMC for discussion at the 3-15 meeting.

IV. Service Quality survey results. Danuta presented preliminary findings of the library reader survey undertaken during Fall99 and early Spring00. She began with a brief description of the SERVQUAL instrument and the Gap Model of Service Quality used in the development of the survey and the project's intended goals. The SERVQUAL instrument has been tested and refined during 15 years of research across industries. It relies on customer perceptions of expectations and service performance to measure service quality. The survey -- which was mailed to 500 randomly selected library readers who had borrowed a book from YUL within the past year -- was based on the following assumptions:

• Service quality is the perceived gap between reader expectations (defined as the extent to which an "ideal" library delivers specific service attributes) and perceptions of delivered services (defined as the extent to which readers believe YUL delivers these attributes).

• This measure will

a) provide a diagnosis of the service provider's quality of service and

b) help identify areas in which improvements can be made.

• An alternate approach to assess service quality was developed by Peter Hernon (Professor, Graduate School of Library & Information Sciences, Simmons College); it addresses SERVQUAL's noted deficiencies when applied to the library setting. As per the "Hernon approach," the service provider defines what factors are important; the design of the survey will not depend solely on the reader's point of view. Danuta worked with Peter to merge the two approaches. In Fall99, SQIC identified 40 factors that members and readers classified as most important in defining library service quality.

• Since the pool of survey participants was not a self-selected group, it was concluded that the results tabulated for the respondents can be generalized to the population of Yale University library readers.

The response rate was 45% (n=226). YUL received an overall satisfaction rating of 7.1 on a 10-point scale. Danuta noted that despite this relatively high rating, an overall gap of approximately 3 points indicates that there is room for improvement in providing excellent quality of service to our users. According to survey results, we have not exceeded user expectations for any service attribute, though we do come close to meeting expectations for service on a number of items queried in the questionnaire. Katie Bauer asked whether there have been any instances in which respondents have ranked services as exceeding their expectations. Danuta replied that there have been such cases in applications of the SERVQUAL instrument.

To derive priorities for change at YUL, Danuta displayed a graph delineating how service factors included in the survey fall within 3 categories. These categories and corresponding recommendations are as follows:

• Factors most important to readers and delivered best by YUL. It was noted that factors related to staff performance (staff are seen as approachable, welcoming, courteous, polite) fell within this category. These qualities/activities should be retained, with no immediate action for improvement required.

• Factors rated high in importance to readers but receiving lower performance ratings. This category was further bisected into 1) lower priority and 2) higher priority. It was noted that Web design-related items (easy navigation, availability of online request forms) are included in the lower priority set of factors (i.e., qualities/activities that readers regard as performed better by YUL of the 2 sub-categories). Prominently featured in the higher priority set of factors (i.e., qualities/activities that readers regard as performed less well of the 2 subcategories) are issues related to physical access to materials (prompt reshelving; reliability of OPAC entries; materials are where they should be on the shelves). The focus of service improvement efforts should be placed on this category, and in particular, on the higher priority sub-category. The completion of the retrospective conversion project is expected to address user concerns about the accuracy of OPAC entries.

• Factors of lower importance to readers and registering lower performance ratings by YUL. The attractiveness of the library Web site is included in this category. These qualities/activities require less immediate attention.

No factors fell in categories considered by readers to be less important but performed relatively well by YUL.

Fred Martz remarked that the greater portion of matters requiring attention appear to be relatively mundane activities pertaining to physical access to materials and not computer-related.

Danuta will share further information on the results of her data analysis as they become available.

V. Paul announced that SQIC will next meet on 4-5-00; the 3-22 meeting has been cancelled. He reminded SQIC members to keep the 14th free for Dan Seymour's visit.

The meeting adjourned at 4:00 p.m.