| This study investigated the quality of interlibrary borrowing services from two perspectives: the library perspective based on fill rate and turnaround time, and the customer perspective based on expectation disconfirmation. The study used an unobtrusive approach in which 130 participants in 38 cities went to their public library and said to the staff there: "Excuse me, I'm looking for this book but I can't seem to find it in your catalogue. Can you help me?" Participants maintained a log to document their service experience, and to permit the calculation of fill rate and turnaround time. Expectations and perceptions of service quality were measured using the SERVQUAL questionnaire, developed in the marketing management sector to measure service quality from the customer perspective.;Library measures of quality produced a fill rate of 52 per cent. Causes of failure included 31 per cent of requests not located, 11 per cent of requests refused at the front desk, and 6 per cent of requests not filled for other reasons. The median turnaround time was 38 days, of which 23 days represented initial processing time by the borrowing library.;Participant expectations of service quality were higher than their perceptions of the quality of services received. Reliability, the dimension of service quality ranked most important by participants, scored lowest in performance, while the tangibles dimension, ranked least important, was the only quality dimension where performance exceeded expectations. Satisfaction with the interlibrary borrowing experience was lower than overall perceptions, and willingness to recommend interlibrary borrowing to others was lower still. Overall attitudes about public library services in general were higher than the level of satisfaction with interlibrary borrowing.;The study found a mismatch between library measures of interlibrary borrowing, based on fill rate and turnaround time, and customer measures of quality, based on expectancy disconfirmation theory. |
