Demonstrating quality in academic libraries

This paper reviews some of the current issues with regard to demonstrating quality of service provision in academic libraries. The need to discover an effective means of measuring the impact of library services on the academic community is identified and discussed. Research into organisational effectiveness is reviewed, to assess its applicability to assessing quality of service provision. It is argued that libraries need to adopt a marketing orientation in measuring quality and performance. Scorecard models used currently in the private sector are outlined and their usefulness to the management of public sector libraries evaluated. The authors recommend the employment of the Balanced Scorecard as a means of demonstrating quality in academic libraries and the degree to which such services are responsive to the needs to their customers/stakeholders.