The evaluation of quality of services in central library of Zahedan University of medical sciences

Background: In 1995 Parasuraman, the expert in marketing designed an instrument which was
able to evaluate quality of services from customers' perspectives in any organization or center. This
instrument is called SERVQUAL questionnaire. SERVQUAL measures the 3 levels of services:
desired expectations, rendered services and minimum expected services, in seven dimensions. This
study is going to examine the overall service quality of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences
library from users' perspectives, as well as identifies in what dimension the library has gained
unaccepted quality services and what problems users have when using the library services.
Methods and materials: This study was conducted at the library during September 22-December
20, 2004. The randomly selected respondents, 212 students, 50 academicians to complete the
SERVQUAL questionnaires in the 3 levels of services. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS
software. The mean of qualitative services were analyzed for the 3 levels. Library user’s problems
were also studied.

Results: The present study showed that the studied library has not come up to the expectations of
the user in any of the dimensions. In the dimension of appropriate treatment of the individual,
accountability, and reliability, taking into account the minimum expected services, the gap was
0.70, 0.68 and 0.08, respectively.
Conclusions: The results of this study are indicative of weak and strong points of library services
from user’s perspective and it revealed that in what aspect the library is good and the weak points
were also pointed out. The results are of contributory nature to manager’s decision- making so that
the satisfaction of users is insured.