Editorial

Citation

Thornton, S. (2012), "Editorial", Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 13 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/pmm.2012.27913caa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Performance Measurement and Metrics, Volume 13, Issue 3.

In this issue we have papers from Oman and the UK, The Netherlands, Denmark, Bangladesh and Spain.

Khalfan Zahran Al Hijji and Andrew Cox present us with an overview of the current state of performance measurement techniques currently in use in Omani academic libraries. These processes are in their infancy, but with the Oman Accreditation Council applying rigorous quality requirements to academia, and the introduction of external international assessors we can be sure to see the development of evaluating systems in the sector of library and information services in the country.

From the Netherlands, Henk Voorbij provides us with an overview of the use of LibQUAL+ across Europe. There are authorised translations of the survey tool in Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian and Spanish, permitting its easy use in seven countries, the majority of use being in France. While the study showed that the survey had been carried out in 31 libraries across nine countries (including Ireland and the UK) some 45 carried out alternative surveys instead of LibQUAL+. Even though it is growing in popularity, and has been actively used as a trigger to improve services and introduce new ones, there is an undercurrent of unpopularity with user-unfriendliness being the major cause for complaint. It is also described as “boring”.

Niels Pors and Haakon Lund from Denmark, allow us into some of the results of a monumental study into the use of three information literacy web tutorials used in Norwegian academia. It investigated not only simple usability, but investigated organisation issues, and the use of the systems. I recommend this paper as a prime example of how to carry out and present research. To me, one of the particularly interesting items to come out of it is that of “organisational amnesia”. At one library, lacking a strong advocate following staff changes and retirements, the tutorial and its real purpose were just forgotten.

Organisational amnesia is a common failing and has its roots in the lack of proper knowledge management. One national governmental department and its library I had experience of was a prime example of this. On the outbreak of a virulent animal disease, the librarian had extra copies made of a report describing the experiences and lessons learned during the last major outbreak 35 years before. The only problem was that the Department itself had forgotten the earlier outbreak and its follow up studies, and consequently failed to ask the library for the report. And the library, having done what it thought was its role in making copies available on the shelf, failed to inform the staff who needed to know that it existed – it was not their job to do so. Ultimately, it was the end for both the department and the library.

In a profession which claims expertise in knowledge management, a field in which it should be taking the lead, it is sad to see how often corporate amnesia kicks in. We have all probably been culpable at one time or another: I have written guides to processes and procedures, tracts on why things were done the way they were, only to have forgotten myself that I had written them! Once, chatting to a director of my organisation I reminded him of a literature search I had conducted for him 22 years before, only to have him strenuously deny ever working in that subject area. Ten minutes later he returned somewhat hangdog to admit that, yes he had done that work but had completely forgotten about it.

Muhammad Jaba Hossain and Muhammad Anwarul Islam from Bangladesh gives us a SERVQUAL based study looking at perceived service quality at the University of Dhaka. Even as the premier University in Bangladesh, it fell short in the users’ survey in almost all of the categories asked about. The implication is that the library, falling short of expectations, is somewhat inferior. But is it? This raises the point I have made many times: to what extent should we be slaves to perceived service quality. Ask the public (in this case the users) for their opinion and it will usually fall short of their ideals – unless that service is under threat. Had the library service been under threat of cuts or immediate closure, satisfaction rates would have soared. Libraries are seen as beneficent bodies that (ultimately) exist for their users, and the users are, on the whole, fully aware of this. They may grumble in the background, but once the service is threatened they tend to become the most irrational supporters.

There is nothing as useless a library that serves no real purpose, but do perceived service gaps actually measure purpose and worth? In my opinion they do no such thing. You can offer the finest services going, and there will often still be service gaps. True, some of the dimensions may actually have a positive service gap, but such information presented to senior management can be very dangerous. Fall short of expectations, and the question raises its head of whether the service is needed at all in these days of Google Scholar. Exceed expectations and the contrary argument appears – why are you providing an unnecessary gold plated service which even the users say is too good for them? Such surveys need to be treated with extreme caution and used as indicators for further detailed investigations, and not taken as gospel in their own right.

Mata De la Mano from Spain and Janet Harrison from the UK look at the two main national accreditation programmes developed in the UK to assess the quality of the health library services of the National Health Service: the Helicon checklist and the recent Library Quality Assurance Framework (LQAF) framework. The turbulence caused from technological changes, the continuous reforms of the National Health System (NHS) and the dramatic reduction of public funding, together with the growing importance of knowledge management as central to the delivery of high-quality health services, have forced libraries to face new challenges and develop new roles in a very unstable environment. As a result, since the publication of the first accreditation scheme, the standards defined as criteria of quality for health libraries have been undergoing continuous reviews and modifications to fit the needs prompted by that changing and innovative reality.

Initially created in the late 1990s, a revised 2002 edition of the HELICON standard, unusually for most standard accreditation schemes, was generally accepted as a win-win tool by health librarians across the UK. Nevertheless, a different tool, the National Service Framework, was developed after lengthy consultation, focusing on three key business objectives – commissioning, access and library/knowledge service staffing – it was a very extensive document with many standards, sorted into five domains, each one related to a library service area, and defined by more than 200 criteria. However, this framework proved too complex and unwieldy for practical implementation and a replacement NHS LQAF for England was published in 2010.

Marta and Janet describe each of the two major initiatives in detail and their structure and content. Even though English health service libraries have had to use all three accreditation programmes over just four years, improvements are already in the pipeline with a revised edition on the stocks. Plus ça change?

I hope you enjoy these papers as much as I have in reading them.

Steve Thornton