Assessment of Customer Service in Academic Health Care Libraries (ACSAHL): an instrument for measuring customer service

OBJECTIVES: In a pilot study, the library had good results using SERVQUAL, a respected and often-used instrument for measuring customer satisfaction. The SERVQUAL instrument itself, however, received some serious and well-founded criticism from the respondents to our survey. The purpose of this study was to test the comparability of the results of SERVQUAL with a revised and shortened instrument modeled on SERVQUAL. The revised instrument, the Assessment of Customer Service in Academic Health Care Libraries (ACSAHL), was designed to better assess customer service in academic health care libraries. METHODS: Surveys were sent to clients who had used the document delivery services at three academic medical libraries in Texas over the previous twelve to eighteen months. ACSAHL surveys were sent exclusively to clients at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern, while the client pools at the two other institutions were randomly divided and provided either SERVQUAL or ACSAHL surveys. RESULTS: Results indicated that more respondents preferred the shorter ACSAHL instrument to the longer and more complex SERVQUAL instrument. Also, comparing the scores from both surveys indicated that ACSAHL elicited comparable results. CONCLUSIONS: ACSAHL appears to measure the same type of data in similar settings, but additional testing is recommended both to confirm the survey's results through data replication and to investigate whether the instrument applies to different service areas.     

How ‘free distribution’ impacts your business model: is it really free?

The widespread perceptions associated with digital technology and the internet are forcing publishers to look to ways to shift the balance of the burden of cost away from the user. We describe seven examples of ‘free’ distribution and discuss how they impact publishing business models.     

A theoretical framework for the more efficient construction of culture assimilators

A theoretical framework is presented which consists of dimensions of cultural variation. These dimensions constitute a theory of cultural differences in social behavior that may be used to develop culture assimilators. A Japanese assimitator developed theoretically, basedon this framework, took one-thirteenth the amount of time required for the construction of a regular assimilator. The framework is offered as a stimulus for future research that will provide a comparative test of assimilators constructed in the more elaborate and expensive way and the present short-cut way.     

Effects of extended fixed-interval training on reversed scallops

Two groups of pigeons were used to determine if different amounts of fixed-interval training with an added clock resulted in different local response rates when the clock was reversed. One group of seven pigeons received 120 reinforcements on a fixed-interval 90-sec schedule, while the other group received 1200 reinforcements. Following training, the added clock was reversed in extinction. Reversed scallops were obtained for both of the groups. Only the group with extended training showed an increase in responding during the previously reinforced segment of the interval. This suggests the development of greater temporal control with extended training.