Academic libraries exist in institutions of Higher learning to satisfy the information needs of their parent bodies. For libraries to offer quality service, they must implement total quality management and use customer service as a tool to achieve customer satisfaction which will in turn ensure participation and involvement of stakeholders resulting in continuous improvement to the satisfaction of customers.
Customer satisfaction will change the negative perception of customers and ensure loyalty. Customer satisfaction requires expectations of customers be known to be satisfied and perceptions to be known,, if negative, be changed.
The Study intended to investigate the perceptions of users towards library services of the North West University Library at Mafikeng Campus.
Data was collected by means of a questionnaire administered to students and staff in all faculties of the University. A sample of 150 students and 150 staff members was used. The library services that were used in the questionnaire were those that impact on customer care such as circulations, information services, collection development, media and special collections and information access.
The main findings showed that both staff and students' perceptions of the library services to be negative due to perceived lack of resources (Books and journals), lack of training on library use and e-resources and incompetent staff.
The researcher recommended that the library must put in place structures that will be used to communicate information and educate stakeholders about the library and help identify problem areas to be solved. The recommended structures are a Library Council for students and Library Committee for staff. The researcher also recommends that the library consult with stakeholders on issues of common interest such as training, orientation, rules and regulations to ensure cooperation. The researcher further recommends performance evaluation of the library by stakeholders and benchmarking with other institutions.
This study suggested an in depth study of user perceptions for each library service offered and a study of user expectations of different user categories of library services as areas of further research. / Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2010
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/11182 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Ndwandwe, Patience Sibongile |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds