Importance-performance analysis as a strategic approach for quality assessment of academic library performance

The present research aimed at assessing the quality of services offered by libraries of Islamic Azad University, Sciences and Research Campus on the basis of Importance-performance analysis. Research sample is composed of 563 subjects selected among all defacto users of libraries of Sciences and Research Campus using disproportionate stratified sampling. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire with five quality components. Research findings demonstrated that libraries surveyed had average performance. Moreover, it was clear that services "operation time of libraries", "staff", and "circulation" were the most important services based on user's viewpoints. It was also recognized that components "staff", "information literacy" and "environment, equipment and physical facilities" have had better performance, respectively; while component "non-book materials" has had a poor performance compared to other components. On the other hand, results of testing hypotheses 1-5 indicated that there was a significant difference between importance rate of five quality components and their performance level from user's perspective. Additionally, it was confirmed that there was a significant difference between quality of services offered by libraries studied. Accordingly, libraries of "College of Theology" (mean=2.2639) and "College of Medical Engineering" (mean=2.4507) were among low performance libraries.