Customer Satisfaction Management with “Counting Opinion” Surveys

This article tracks how Ajax Library Services, located in suburban Toronto, followed up on its designation as the only ISO‐certified library in North America by its adoption of the computer‐based, computer‐survey tools of Counting Opinions. Use of the online survey tool helped to inspire reforms in customer service, collection development and many other library policies. And, with before and after data reports, library administration could see how the library's users reacted to the changes. This intermixing of quantitative and qualitative data represents a level of customer‐opinion‐and‐data analysis seldom seen in public libraries. Collecting Opinions has expanded its public library analytical utilities to include access to data on additional public libraries so that customers can do statistical rankings to rank their own service levels to other libraries who serve communities with similar demographics.     

Empirical Research on a Model to Measure End-user Satisfaction with the Quality of Database Search Results

We constructed an end-user model to measure end-user satisfaction with the quality of database search results, using the customer satisfaction theory as a metric. We investigated end-user satisfaction and analyzed key factors which affected user satisfaction. The results show that the end-users' perception of value is the key factor among all of the different factors that impact satisfaction with regard to quality and end-users are willing to make efforts to obtain a higher quality of data. Users tend to evaluate their satisfaction from the perspective of their demands, and database developers should be user oriented in order to improve the level of satisfaction with the data in the database.     

Listening to Customers: How EBSCO Plans Enhancements and Product Acquisitions Based on Customer Feedback

The importance of customer feedback and the value that it adds to product development and enhancements cannot be overstated. Customer feedback also plays a key role in the development of online resources. But how do you merge customer feedback and the development of new proposals for product design? The balance between customer feedback and strategic direction is something EBSCO strives for in every build of new product enhancements. Many of the company's most important products and interface enhancements can trace their origins back (at least in part) to customer feedback or customer‐based advisory boards. By keeping an open channel of communication between customers and developers, EBSCO has positioned itself as a global leader in matching ongoing product development to current customer need. In doing so, the company has also laid the foundation for ascertaining and responding to the future needs of customers.     

OTseeker helps library and allied health professionals to find quality evidence efficiently

Background: Research is essential for evidence‐based practice yet many health professionals do not have enough time to find research. Studies relevant to occupational therapists can be particularly difficult to find. Most search engines are broad and return a large number of irrelevant articles. Occupational Therapy Systematic Evaluation of Evidence (OTseeker) is an occupational therapy database available at http://www.otseeker.com . Developed by Australian occupational therapists, the resource aims to increase access to research and support clinical decision making. This discipline‐specific database contains pre‐appraised information from a variety of sources and decreases the time required to locate best evidence. Objectives: The aims of this paper are to: (i) describe how health librarians can use OTseeker to help allied health students, researchers and practitioners, particularly in occupational therapy, to find quality evidence; (ii) provide a teaching resource for health librarians based around the OTseeker evidence database; and (iii) highlight new features contained on the OTseeker database. Methods: A case study is provided which focuses on searching for evidence on the effectiveness of upper limb rehabilitation after stroke using OTseeker. Conclusion: This paper may increase the knowledge, skills and competencies of health librarians, helping them to access evidence‐based databases, and educate other professionals.     

GPO Gate University of California,San Diego's New Gateway to electronic government information

Over the past year, a team of librarians and computer analysts at the University of California (UC), San Diego developed a new interface for accessing the Government Printing Office's WAIS databases, collectively known as GPO Access. GPO Access has been an important development in the delivery of government information. UC San Diego's new World Wide Web interface, called GPO Gate, provides a powerful, user-friendly method of searching and retrieving full-text government information from GPO access. GPO Gate is now the University of California's system-wide gateway for GPO Access. The GPO Gate team instituted two mechanisms to monitor database usage: a user-tracking system and a user survey. The user-tracking system logs the number of uses, searches, and retrievals by domain type and identifies users by the database used. Since its inception in August 1995, use of GPO Gate has increased dramatically. Much of the increase can be attributed to searches and retrievals from the Federal Register. The largest single user group is composed of commercial users. The increased use of GPO Gate has many implications for public service related to government documents, including an expansion of the number of users, the need for reference providers to better understand computer hardware and software, and confusion among users caused by rapid changes in the delivery of government information.     

Are They Watching? Visitors and Videos in Exhibitions

Abstract Data from the Women's Health summative evaluation video study prompted a comparison with similar data for other videos in exhibitions. Values for attraction power, holding time, and holding power were compiled in a database of 45 video titles. On average, 32 percent of the visitors are attracted to videos, and the average time spent watching is 137 seconds. An attraction power of more than 60 percent was exceptional. On average, people watched more than one‐third of the total length of videos, but less than one half. A holding power of more than .70 was exceptional. Once a video has attracted people's attention, it does not always hold it. Visitors are constantly tempted to move to another exhibit element, looking for what's next. One cannot assume that introductory videos will be watched thoroughly by the majority of visitors. This has implications for introductory videos that are expected to teach visitors concepts and vocabulary necessary to understand the rest of the exhibition or a main message that ties everything together. Using these data as a guideline, we can realistically gauge what levels of use are possible, and what levels of success, as measured by visitors' attention, can be anticipated.     

Data Rules: How Mapping Technology Drives Better Customer Service

Is your library market-driven, product-driven or customer-driven? New internet-based data and tools are now available for public libraries that enable you to be customer-driven—for your own unique service area. This article shows how three library systems are using these tools—focused on market segmentation data and geographic information system (GIS) technology—to deliver more relevant customer services. Each solution described in the article was developed in close collaboration between CIVICTechnologies and the library, involving research to understand the library's objectives and desired outcomes, and using the data needed to meet each library's unique challenge.     

Customer agility and responsiveness through big data analytics for public value creation: A case study of Houston 311 on-demand services

A theoretical framework for big data analytics-enabled customer agility and responsiveness was developed from extant IS research. In on-demand service environments, customer agility involves dynamic capabilities in sensing and responding to citizens. Using this framework, a case study examined a large city government's 311 on-demand services which had leveraged big data analytics. While we found the localized big data analytics use by some of the 22 departments for enhanced customer agility and on-demand 311 services, city-wide systemic change in on-demand service delivery through big data analytics use was not evident. From the case study we identified key institutional mechanisms for linking customer agility to public value creation through 311 services. We posit how systemic use of big data analytics embedded into critical processes enables the government to co-create public values with citizens through 311 on-demand services, indicating the importance of creating a culture of analytics driven by strong political leadership.     

Local Journal Utilization Report: Supporting Data for Collection Decisions

The Local Journal Utilization Report (LJUR) is a customized report about an institution's citation and publishing history. Based on data from the Web of Science database, LJUR can be a useful tool for libraries in a variety of capacities, from informing journal cancellation decisions to quantifying institutional research trends.     

Knowing your users: the value of article database usage analysis

This study analyzes the usage data of a major engineering article database, IEEE Xplore, from 2005 to 2008, at Texas A&M University. Usage data collected from the IEEE Xplore statistics website demonstrated some interesting patterns of user behavior. Usage of the database increased steadily from 2005 to 2007, but dropped in 2008 due to the launch of the library's new website; off‐campus usage was high in the first two years, but plunged in 2007 and 2008. Users from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and, to a lesser degree, from the Computer Science Department, were identified as major users of the database by IP statistics. The most heavily used journals and articles indicated that solid‐state circuits, microwave, information theory, and power systems were probably among core research areas in electrical and computer engineering for the university. The impact of conference articles in this database increased continuously throughout these years.     

Advocating for controversial issues: The effect of activism on compliance‐gaining strategy likelihood of use

Previous research has demonstrated that compliance‐gaining strategies can he arrayed on an unidimensional continuum, anchored by positive, pro‐social strategies and negative, antisocial strategies (Hunter & Boster, 1987; Rolojf & Barnicott, 1978, 1979). Individual differences, including argumentativeness and verbal aggression (Boster & Levine, 1988), have been shown to affect one's ethical threshold. This ethical threshold is consistent with a Guttman simplex and determines both how many, as well as how antisocial, compliance‐gaining strategies individuals may consider using. Activists, who are highly involved and committed to their cause and who tend to be less verbally aggressive and more argumentative than the general public (Campo, 1999), are likely to have a lower threshold and to use more strategies. This study examines to what extent activism predicts one's ethical threshold, when controlling for the known effects of argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, and sex. Participants (N = 454) at two separate universities completed a repeated measures questionnaire that asked them to indicate their likelihood of use of 25 separate compliance‐gaining strategies. Based on respondents’ likelihood of use of these 25 strategies, the data were consistent with a Guttman simplex. A multiple regression model was tested, and indicated that one's ethical threshold is directly predicted by level of activism and verbal aggressiveness. Sex and argumentativeness were not found to be significant predictors in this revised model. In addition, activists used more strategies than non‐activists. Implications for advancing research related to activism and compliance‐gaining strategy selection are discussed.     

Market Competition and the Media Performance of Taiwan's Cable Television Industry

Using industrial organization as the theoretical framework, this study examines the relation between market competition and the media performance of Taiwan's cable television industry. The media performance of cable television systems is defined as the subscribers' satisfaction with program service, customer service, and community service. A telephone survey was conducted to collect data for the study. This study's findings in general support a positive relation between market competition and media performance, which accords with most previous studies.     

Goal Programming as a Solution Technique for the Acquisitions Allocation Problem

Decisions influencing the allocation of acquisitions funds in academic libraries are often based on the influence of many conflicting expectations ranging from those of the university community, administrators, faculty, and students to those of the librarians themselves. Any effective allocation model must be capable of reflecting the librarian's judgment about the priority of desired goals within the constraints of the existing situation. Most allocation models fail to meet this requirement. This article demonstrates how goal programming techniques can be used to provide an optimal allocation solution within the context of conflicting and incommensurate goals. A goal programming model is developed and used to illustrate the solution of a library acquisition allocation problem.     

Evolution of a State Periodical Index: Converting an In-House Index to a MARC-Based Database on the Web

This article describes the process of transforming the Arkansas Periodical Index, which began as a card file index in the University of Arkansas (U. of A.) Libraries, to an online database. As in many other states, in-house indexes were compiled to cover local history journals and subject-related magazines. A variety of software now exists to mount locally created databases, one option being the choice to use the same turnkey software that runs the library's online catalog. We began by converting our card files to a local Inmagic DB/Textworks database. The U. of A. received the 1991 Gale Research Award for Excellence in Reference and Adult Library Services for that design. We later mapped the database structure to MARC fields and mounted it as a Web-accessible database through our library OPAC vendor, Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (III). The authors begin with a brief history of periodical indexing, the reasons for choosing MARC formatting, and the field mapping required. The article explains the development of the database to include other publication formats, such as material from biographical compendiums, newspaper indexing, and university publications. The mapping incorporates indexing several publication formats in the same database. It also provides fields for linking citations back to the OPAC records, where users may find call numbers for journals or books, be connected to the full text of articles when available, or to an association's own website when applicable. We address some of the concerns for libraries in developing indexing projects. The article offers a mapping table of migrated fields that can be used by others wanting to encourage the rediscovery of local print periodicals and to expand access to the various materials otherwise buried in the library's special collections. The Arkansas Publications Index was released in April 2005 and is available free at http://arkindex.uark.edu/.     

Internet Resources:

This article is aimed at the practical applications of information available on the Internet and how it creates a new role f a reference librarians as information facilitators. It focuses on the Info.umd.edu database developed by the University of Maryland and how it makes the transfer of files very easy. There are examples of how his database can be used to facilitate librarian and faculty interaction and collegiality, and how it is a resource for answers to specific questions. It contains specific examples of how the database was used in the above situations. One such example is how the author introduced the Women's Studies sections of the database to the Women's Studies faculty. They saw it as a wonderhrl resource for information as to what other faculty are doing across the country. The database has been used to enhance the image of the library on campus. Within minutes of downloading the text of the Democratic National Platform from Info, the college president's office called thanking the library for making it available to the campus. It presents the idea that the information available on the Internet is still essentially an untapped resource by many faculty and students. Librarians have the skills to become guides and mentors in the exploitation of that resource. Databases like Info.umd.edu and knowledge of them make us a valuable commodity on campus.     

Meeting Them Where They Are: Library Instruction for Today's Students in the World Civilizations Course

ABSTRACT

The world civilizations course is an increasingly integral component of undergraduate curricula in the United States. History instruction literature reveals much discussion about desired learning objectives for students in the course. Given today's complex educational environment, meeting those objectives can be a challenge. Instructors' frustrations are implied, and often expressly stated, regarding the poor quality of their students' research skills. This has an impact on instructors' perceptions and design of the course. As a solution, the author of this paper discusses faculty-librarian collaboration to integrate library instruction into the University at Buffalo's world civilizations curriculum. A multifaceted approach is described, which combines traditional, contemporary, and novel instructional techniques. Preliminary data collected to assess the usefulness and effectiveness of this approach are reviewed.     

Understanding end‐users in academic book publishing

This article reviews ways that commissioning editors in academic book publishing can better understand the end‐users of their products. It discusses available market resources, reports, and market research undertaken by other publishing companies and consultants, before going on to look at some of the existing internal sources that commissioning editors can draw on. It considers both qualitative and quantitative ways of testing and developing a commissioning editor's understanding of end‐users to improve market reach and customer satisfaction. The article concludes with a case study illustrating how one publisher used research on end‐users to improve its products and be more successful in the market.     

The ICPSR and Social Science Research

ABSTRACT

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, is the world's largest social science data archive. The data sets in the ICPRS database give the social sciences librarian/subject specialist an opportunity of providing value-added bibliographic information. Access to the data sets is by membership in the consortium. This article gives an overview of the ICPSR database and of other services provided by the ICPSR, including sample usage statistics and reports. Research has shown that use of electronic resources, such as that provided by the data sets of the ICPSR, leads to an increase in publications by scholars. Librarians from a variety of disciplines—economics, political science, education, sociology, criminal justice, and social work—can help their researchers use the ICPSR's data sets to help further the goals of social science.