USERS' EMOTIONAL AND MATERIAL SATISFACTION AT THE MICRO/MACRO LEVELS IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY

Abstract

In late 1990s, Gap theories and the LibQual model began to be widely accepted by research libraries in the U.S. Since then, library service evaluation and user satisfaction issues have been discussed in various aspects of both the research and professional literatures of library and information science. Although the research presented herein is concerned with the evaluation of library services from users' perspectives -- like LibQual, for example -- it integrated other perspectives proposed in recent years by library researchers, including emotional and material satisfaction, service encounter and overall service satisfaction, and user satisfaction at the micro and macro levels. Specifically, the interrelationship of material and emotional satisfaction with the satisfactions at the micro and macro levels was investigated. In addition, this study sought to clarify factors or attributes of library services that contribute to user satisfaction at the micro and macro levels. Finally, the study examined how users' emotional and material satisfaction contribute to overall user satisfaction and user behavior, including user library use behavior in the short term (immediate next time information seeking) and the long term (library use loyalty).In order to gather data on these user satisfaction issues, a Web survey of college students, a major academic library user group, was conducted at the University of Pittsburgh. Each participant completed a five section HTML survey questionnaire designed to collect information about their perception and attitude towards library resources and services.Specifically, the findings provide library professionals greater understanding of how users perceive their library use and how user satisfaction is formed and influenced, in terms of its formation, antecedent, and consequent impact. The research also provides librarians with what is hoped will be practical advice on what else they can or should do to improve library use. For instance, it is important to recognize users' emotional experience in their library use because it determines their immediate next time library use behavior and service use loyalty; it is easier to achieve service use loyalty for repeat users in some specific services than to achieve general library use loyalty for them or occasional users.

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