Quality management in Educational Library
Introduction:-
The principal issue this paper deals with is Total Quality Management (TQM) in a academic organization such as academic libraries. We understand TQM as the entirety of quality-related activities and objectives of the library. In this context, it is important that a comprehensive quality management consider processes as well as people, staff members included. Libraries confront a change of paradigm. In contrast, thinking in terms of marketing and TQM concepts starts with the customer. The customers, as a whole, give the mandate to the librarian who, in his turn, acts on behalf of the institution. Marketing and TQM are closely and clearly interlinked. Marketing focuses on capturing and analyzing customers' needs, TQM involves the question of whether products and services do correspond to customers' expectations and needs and whether both are congruent with each other. Thus, library services aim at optimizing the relationship between customers' expectations and their fulfillment by the library. both theory and practice in academic libraries have been primarily directed towards product inventories – predominantly the traditional print media – rather than the library’s customers. Both structure and function in many libraries reflect this orientation. Not all libraries have yet begun to think in terms of their customers’ requirements, and an emphasis on quality in meeting those requirements is also not yet seen as self-evident.
Quality means:-
Meeting the customer’s wishes. This way, the importance of linking it to marketing becomes apparent. As for TQM, we opt for the following definition: "A purpose built system for integrating the efforts of the various groups within an organization to develop, maintain and improve quality, in order to organize production and service provision in the most economical way possible, for the complete satisfaction of the customer."
Quality by U. G. C.:-
Each one gives his or her own definition, but one meaning of quality is customer satisfaction through product or by service. The customer in the academic library is the user/reader/student. Here the customer is not an outsider, but part of the academic community. As a response of this challenge of quality, India’s University Grants Commission (UGC—www.ugc.ac.in) has set up NAAC (www.naac-india.com/index.asp), the National Accreditation and Assessment Council. NAAC conducts audits and inspections on the quality of service provided by educational institutions, including library service. Grants are linked to the outcomes of these assessments. In light of this, academic libraries must develop systems, philosophies, and strategies for managing quality.
Purpose of an Academic Library:-
The primary purpose of an academic library is to support the teaching, research, and other academic programs of its parent organization. An academic library is part of a service organization which delivers products personally to the customer.
In a manufacturing concern, the customer is remote, where as in service organization like an academic library, producers and consumer meet face to face. The complexity of managing service organizations is typically compounded by the existence of multiple interfaces.
Various Dimensions:-
- Accreditation by external bodies. Academic libraries are subject to formal quality audits and quality assurance processes;
- Achieving a quality of service that contributes to the institution’s mission, vision, aims and objectives;
- Achieving a quality of service that satisfies the research and information needs and expectations of academic and non-academic staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and university management;
- Library management – How the service is provided. Operating in an effective manner with regards to, for example, staff, space and facilities, resources, acquisitions, access, availability, circulation, finances and information technology. Quality management operates at different levels of the institution and the purpose is quality enhancement and providing accountability. Information managers need to prove the worth of their services so that the parent institution acknowledges the impact of library and information services. The quality of the academic library could affect the overall quality of the institution.
Managing Quality in an Academic Library:-
In a service organization like an academic library the customer satisfaction means fulfilling expectations. Librarians must find out what readers want and concentrate upon providing it. Designing an appropriate service means asking
- Who are the customers?
- What do they want?
- What can the organization provide?
In a library there are basically two types of customer: those who are in a hurry and those who want to kill time. An academic library has to identify these and serve them accordingly.
Quality Standards:-
Within quality management, a variety of quality management standards, evaluation forms and schemes for self-appraisal have evolved. These standards are practice-oriented tools whose basic function is to create and sustain confidence in a customer-supplier relationship and provide a systematic approach to quality management.
The ISO 9000 series of standards is widely used as the most recent international standards for quality management. In the LIS Sector, the Common Communication Format (CCF) evolved as the bibliographic format.
The ISO 9000 (2005) standard describe quality as
“The consistent conformance of a product or service to a given set of standards or expectations”.
According to the ISO Standard 11620 Performance indicators for libraries, “quality” is the
“totality of features and characteristics of a product or services that bear on the library’s ability to satisfy stated or implied needs”
The ISO 11620, 1998. Quality and effectiveness often implies the same.
In the 20th century the focus was strongly on quantitative measurements such as the number of items in stock, 21st century, as user’s expectations, technology, measurements, 1. The provision of current literature;
2. The adequacy of the library collections;
3. The involvement of the respondents in selecting material for the library;
4. The adequacy of library equipment;
5. The adequacy of the physical facilities in the library;
6. Library skills of the users;
7. Frequency of library visits;
8. The location of the library;
9. The adequacy of the library promotion;
10. The availability of needed materials;
11. The availability of library assistance.
Aspects of Academic Library:-
Quality in academic libraries can have many aspects. Measuring service quality in academic libraries could include the following areas:
1. Resources:
The quality of the collection could determine the quality of information support to teaching, learning and research.
• Relevance of documents and items available in the library
• Access to information sources – document delivery, catalogue
• Access to accredited academic journals - subscription or licensing
• Electronic document delivery: Electronic materials and electronic access toinformation
• Balance between holdings and access, and balance between print and electronic materials
• Open access
• Institutional repositories, for example technical reports, theses, dissertations and academic articles can be an indication of the research input and output of the institution
• Special collections and rare items
2. Management and Organisation:
Commitment of the library management team to create an encouraging work environment. Management should be prepared to change decisions and procedures in order to improve service quality.
• Information strategies: Policies (for example a collection development policy) and
procedures to the provision and management of information. According to the Follett Committee in the United Kingdom (Brophy 2000: 31), this would include the acquisition, creation,management
and use of information, as well as information relationships with external agencies.
• Space and space management: buildings and facilities (such as printing and photocopying,) storage and study space, reading areas.
• Information technology and network connections available to users, as well as
library management systems for basic operations like acquisitions, cataloguing
and circulation.
• General appearance - notices, signage, posters, tidy shelves, furniture, appearance
of staff – should be inviting. (You never have a second chance to make a first
impression)
• Marketing of the library and its services – what the library has to offer. (marketing
= visibility)
• Professional involvement in selection and acquisition.
• Library expenditure, although it is not so easy to measure costs, for example how
do you measure “value for money”? The total library budget - for example library
materials, electronic access, network infrastructure, buildings, personnel, other
overhead costs - should be measured to determine return on investment.
• User education
• Retrieving of information
• Reference and enquiry services
• Liaison between the library staff and teaching staff
• Co-operation between libraries, for example consortia.
1. Staffing and staff management:
Staff is responsible for delivering services to the users. They are on the front line with customers. Strong management and leadership play an important role in delivering services. However, every employee in the institution must share the responsibility to contribute to quality. Improved service performance could be the result of staff commitment to service quality.
Ø Staff attitude - knowledgeable, enthusiastic, approachable, helpful staff - is a key ingredient of performance excellence
Ø Staff skills, qualifications, training and development, further education,
workshops and conferences
Ø Staff involvement in planning and decision making. Teamwork encourages shared responsibility.
When measuring quality in academic libraries, the needs and expectations of all the different stakeholders and users should be taken into account.
2. Quality and the Digital Environment:
With the development of information and communication technologies in the digital environment of the 21st century, users have other needs and expectations from library services. (Who needs the library anymore? We have the Internet!). There is a move from collections to connections. Since the mid-1990s, scientific publications began the transformation from print to electronic resources and libraries began to invest in e-resources. Users are often more interested in access to information than physical materials. Additional measures to evaluate the performance of digital library environments need to be developed, for example transaction logs on Weblogs reveal search strategies and use of digital documents. The United States Association of Research Libraries (ARL) developed performance indicators for digital library environments.
Digital access allows them to dedicate less time to physical visits to the library, digital access allows scholarly information to be better integrated into their research workflow, and digital access allows them to make better use of literature in interdisciplinary and emergent fields of study.
3. Methodology of quality measurement:
Quality assessment of an academic library includes products, services, individuals (users, staff, management), as well as the institution. Quality metrics of the service will have to include evaluations at an individual, service, and organizational level. Quality measurement means collecting statistical and other data that describe the performance of the library and analyzing these data in order to evaluate the performance quality. Quality criteria are determined by the institution’s requirements and the library’s goals and objectives, as well as the users’ needs and expectations. To measure quality in academic libraries, one needs to investigate a common framework of reference, an agreed set of standards, performance indicators, evaluation criteria and methodologies. It is, however, important to take local conditions into account, as libraries have different missions and goals, collections and services, and countries may have different standards. Performance indicators will be determined by the specific institution and purpose of the specific measurement. QQML2009: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries, International Conference, Chania Crete Greece, 26-29 May 2009
Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry (1990) developed SERVQUAL, a general instrument for measuring customer’s perceptions of service quality. They identified five general service quality dimensions which contribute to consumer expectations and perceptions of service quality (Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry 1990: 26):
Ø Tangibles: Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials;
Ø Reliability: Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately;
Ø Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service;
Ø Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence;
Ø Empathy: Caring, individualized attention the firm provides the customers.
Many libraries adapted SERVQUAL as instrument to measure service quality. It is necessary to review performance measures from time to time and to make adjustments and other changes when needed.
Conclusions:
Quality in academic libraries is a multi-dimensional construct. Performance measurement is part of a broader quality framework. Quality assessment is done from the perspective of different groups of people. Both quantitative and qualitative measurements are required to determine the quality and effectiveness of the library. Quality measurement is a recurrent process and quality metrics in academic libraries should be done with appropriate frequency in order to keep up with constant change, new demands (e.g. post-graduates), trends and developments (e.g. electronic resources and technology).
The academic library is a role player in higher education effectiveness. Leadership and good management and needed, as well as involvement and commitment by all employees. Libraries are services and they need to re-examine the ways in which services are delivered continuously. It is the task of the academic library to move from a passive service provider to an active and vital force in the institution.
Reference:-
1. Mukhopadlyay, Mamar. (2000) “Management and Quality in Higher Education.” University News. July.
2. Trchan, Para (2000) “Implementation of ISO 9000 in Industrial Libraries: a Case Study.”
3. Brophy, P. (1997). Total quality management. In: Resource management in academic libraries. London: Library Association Publishing.
4. Brophy, P. (2000). The academic library. London: Library Association Publishing.
5. QQML2009: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries, International Conference, Chania Crete Greece, 26-29 May 2009
6. ISO 11620. (1998). Information and documentation. Library performance indicators. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.
7. ISO DIS 11620. (2006). Information and documentation. Library performance indicators. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.
8. ISO 2789. (2006). Information and documentation. International library statistics. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.
9. ISO 9000. (2005). Quality management systems, fundamentals and vocabulary. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.
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12. Zeithaml, V.A, Bitner, M.J. & Gremler, D.D. (2006). Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
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Prepared By : જિતેન્દ્ર પરમાર
