A quality assessment study of services provided by libraries of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences: Using gap analysis model

The aim of this study is to determine the quality level of services of Hamedan Medical Sciences University libraries through gap analysis. This study is applied based on survey – analytical method which evaluates the quality of provided services by means of the questionnaire a“I.A. LibQual”. The population of this study consists of the active users of Hamadan Medical Sciences University libraries based on a random stratified sampling, using the Kerjcie and Morgan,which a sample size equal to 367 persons was obtained. The quality level of services provided by the libraries equals to 2/987 according to the users; and these libraries have, in general, been able to meet the minimum expectations of the users and there is a big gap for them to reach the goal of meeting the whole expectations of the users. From the users’ perspective, the scopes of “hiring”, “staff” and “information station” have received the highest degree of preference and importance respectively. And “publication”, “press” and “audiovisual resources” received the lowest level of importance. On the other hand, the result of the first five hypotheses show that from the users’ perspective, there is a meaningful importance between the level of importance of the basic five main components of quality and the performance level. The gap between the level of importance and the quality level of current services in five components is negative. In other words, to achieve the level of users’ satisfaction and to increase the quality of existing services, Hamadan Medical Sciences University libraries need more effective planning and efforts.