General findings
- Affect of Service: The UWA Library’s sound overall ratings were supported by numerous positive comments regarding customer service. This was the dimension in which academic staff and general staff perceived the Library to be performing best. The results also indicated that undergraduates did not value personal services as highly as did academics and postgraduates. Comments highlighted some specific areas for improvement throughout the Library.
- Information Control: While this dimension ranked highest in importance for all user groups by a wide margin, it was at the same time the area with the largest gap between the desired and the perceived levels of service provision. This pattern, though, is not unique to the UWA Library, and the scores were very close to the ARL benchmarking scores.
- Library as Place: Undergraduates rated this as an important Library service, in particular Quiet space for individual work and A haven for study, learning or research. There were however large standard deviations in some items of this service dimension in undergraduate responses indicating a wide range of opinions regarding the extent to which their desired expectations were being met. Postgraduate students, academic staff and general staff all rated Library as Place as the least important service dimension. Analysis by individual subject library is particularly valuable for this dimension.
Most significant findings
The survey results and comments highlight the following:
- For the largest respondent group - undergraduates - Ready access to computers/Internet/ software was the area of most concern. Despite desired performance being so high the Library was perceived to fail in meeting even minimum expectations.
- All respondents, particularly postgraduates and academic staff, rated Print and/or electronic journal collections I require for my work as one of the two most important services provided by the Library and one they were least satisfied with.
- Undergraduate students identified the provision of Quiet space for individual work, Space for group learning and group study and Library space that inspires study and learning as areas of concern.
