Quality Measures for Libraries and Information Services.

The purpose of this article is to describe briefly two quality evaluation models for academic libraries: the Portuguese investigation proposes an action model to measure the performance of the libraries of the Universidade do Porto (UP). This tool is justified by the CAF – Common Assessment Framework (an auto-evaluation tool based on the European Foundation Quality Management Excellence Model), the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); the PAQ – Quality of Products and Services Evaluation Program of the SIBi/USP, based on the Model SERVQUAL, is an assessment research implemented in the academic libraries of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), in Brazil. The proposal has been presented as being viable and necessary for the management of the libraries of the SIBi/USP

Quality assessment program as contribution for the SIBi/USP management.

It addresses the relevance of the quality assessment processes as instruments of support for managing information services. It describes the implementation of the Product and Service Quality Assessment Program (PAQ) of University of São Paulo’s Integrated Library System (SIBi/USP), reporting two phases performed so far. Phase one, performed in 2002, assessed products and services of SIBi’ libraries by means of questionnaires and interview for data collection. Five electronic questionnaires were applied comprising the SERVQUAL – tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy dimensions and an interview was applied to library users, using three questions. Phase two of PAQ was performed in 2005 by means of electronic form with a view to detecting the users’ needs as to SIBi Service Network resources - SIBiNet (http://www.usp.br/sibi). The methodology adopted included the critical incident method for data collection and SERVQUAL dimensions for result categorization. The analysis has taken into account USP users, non-USP users and the System’s technical team. Results indicate the need of immediate improvement implementation in SIBi’s site and reassert the importance of the Program in adjusting SIBi/USP services to the users’ needs as a System’s managerial tool