Service quality: An unobtrusive investigation of interlibrary loan in large public libraries in Canada

Abstract : The quality of interlibrary loan services was investigated from the dyadic perspective of the library and the library customer. The study paired the use of a valid, reliable measuring instrument, SERVQUAL, with an unobtrusive approach related to 130 contrived interlibrary loan transactions in 38 large public libraries in Canada. Library measures of quality produced a fill rate of 52% and a turnaround time of 38 days. Customer expectations of quality proved higher than their perceptions of the quality of services they had received. Reliability, the dimension of quality ranked most important by customers for evaluating service quality, scored lowest in performance. Overall attitudes about the public library were higher than levels of satisfaction with interlibrary loan services. The study found a mismatch between library measures of interlibrary loan performance, based on fill rate and turnaround time, and customer measures of quality, based on disconfirmation theory