Librarie's Nationwide Membership (Ghadir) Quality Assessment Using SERVQUAL: Co-Librarie's Perspective

Ghadir Program has been developed to make direct access to academic universities’ resources. This program has been implemented in Ministry of Science, Research and Education by Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology as the coordinating centre since 1999 in 240 libraries after a period of pilot run. After a couple of days, it was necessary to assess the quality of this program to make changes if required. Therefore, here the results of assessing the quality of services provided by the coordinating center from the viewpoint of participant libraries were presented. Servqual applied as the base for this quality assessment. The population of this research was the entire participants which consist of 240 libraries affiliated to 66 universities and research centers. The questionnaire as the research instrument was sent to the libraries’ managers and they were asked to give them to Ghadir Program agents to fill it as well. As the result, among the questionnaires returned form 131 libraries, 178 ones were analyzable. The satisfaction of participant libraries from the services received and the gap between these services and their expectations from the coordinating center was investigated. According to the findings, the satisfaction of libraries from this center was more than average (3.5 from 5). In the Servqual dimensions, empathy and responsiveness had the maximum and reliability had the minimum gap between services received and expectations from the coordinating center.