Abstract:
It is important to have a method to continuously assess library services' effectiveness
for an insightful planning towards a reliable service to the community. Building on
this need, this paper first discusses the identification of criteria and their measuring
indicators which are useful in assessing the effectiveness of library services and then
development of a conceptual framework to evaluate the effectiveness of library
services by reviewing related existing literature. Thus, the study includes a
comprehensive literature review related to library services’ effectiveness in which
it identifies, determines and suggests criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of library
services. After analyzing the names and definitions of identified key criteria, the
study identifies ten significant key criteria that diverse authors use to evaluate the
effectiveness of library-related services. Further, the formal and informal
discussions were conducted with ten subject experts, including librarians and library
science academics, to ensure that the content validity fulfills the identified criteria
and its measurement items. The study identified top five evaluation criteria used or
cited in the related works, namely, user satisfaction, management and staff
contributions, service efficiency, accessibility, and collection development.
Additionally, three or more indicator categories for each criterion have been
identified, and the measurable indicators consisted of Likert-type questions on a
five-point rating scale that can be used to measure indicator categories. Finally, the
conceptual framework for assessing library services’ effectiveness has been built up
based on these criteria and their measurement indicators. The next phase of this
research is to build a multi-criteria decision-making model based on the findings to
scientifically measure and evaluate the quality of library services.