General findings
- Affect of Service: UWA’s sound overall ratings were supported by numerous positive comments regarding customer service. With the exception of academic staff all other user groups reported that this was the dimension in which the Library performed best. For academic staff Affect of Service was rated just behind Library as Place. As in 2005 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: As in 2005 this dimension ranked highest in importance for all user groups. At the same time it was the area with the largest gap between the desired and the perceived levels of service provision.
- Library as Place: Undergraduates rated this as the second most important service dimension, in particular Quiet space for individual work and A haven for study, learning, or research. There were however large standard deviations for some items in undergraduate responses indicating a wide range of opinions regarding the extent to which their minimum requirements for Library as Place were being met. Postgraduate students, academic and general staff all rated Library as Place as the least important service dimension.
Most significant findings
The survey results and comments highlight the following:
- For undergraduates the most important service was Making electronic resources accessible from my home or office. This service was also equal first in importance for postgraduates and second in importance for academic staff.
- Postgraduates and academic staff rated Print and/or electronic journal collections I require for my work as the most important service provided by the Library. This service was rated third in importance by undergraduates.
- For the two largest groups of respondents - undergraduates and postgraduates - the Library failed to meet minimum expectations for Ready access to computers/Internet/ software. For both groups the standard deviation of the adequacy gap score was high (2.10 and 2.05) suggesting a wide variety of views.
- For academic staff the Library failed to meet the minimum requirements for 6 of the 8 items in Information Control and barely met the minimum expectations on a seventh. For postgraduates the Library failed to meet minimum requirements on two of the items in the same dimension and barely met minimum requirements in two others.
