Böcker av Peter Hernon

Considerations of service quality require librarians to regard management and the provision of service from an entirely new perspective- from the viewpoint of the library user, for whom the outcome of a trip to the library has far greater relevance than the institutions' outputs.

Evaluation, which is a critical component of the planning process, assesses the effectiveness and efficiency of library programs and services in the context of stated goals and objectives. Chapters discuss steps of the evaluation process and provide practical examples of the application of these steps to specific library problems.

The development and promotion of appropriate services for students with disabilities has been an integral part of the academic library since the 1990s. There remains, however, a dearth of literature-in marketing, library and information science, and other disciplines-that applies quality assessment instruments to existing programs. With this in mind, Hernon and Calvert present two versions of a data collection instrument, designed to compare the expectations of special students with their perceptions of how well a given service met their needs. Descriptions of successful initiatives at a variety of academic libraries are also included.Adaptive technologies. Anti-discrimination laws. Equity and compliance issues. In-house policies (and politics). All of these support, in one form or another, the development and promotion of appropriate services for students with physical, learning, or, increasingly, psychological disabilities. But what of service quality? To date, there is a dearth of literature-in marketing, library and information science, and other disciplines-that applies quality assessment instruments to programs for special student populations. Not until now has anyone compared the expectations of such students with their perceptions of how well a given service meets their needs. Peter Hernon, Philip Calvert, and their colleagues-Kathleen Rogers, Todd K. Herriott, and Ava Gibson-discuss the circumstances affecting services for the disabled, and provide two versions of a data collection instrument, loosely based on SERVQUAL, that individual institutions can modify to reflect their particular needs and situations. International in scope, it incorporates the perspective of university attorneys and compliance officers, as well as descriptions of successful initiatives by senior library administrators in the U.S. (Larry Hardesty, Rush G. Miller, Sarah Hamrick, and Jennifer Lann) and New Zealand (Helen Renwick, Philip Jane, and John Redmayne.) Improving the Quality of Library Services for Students with Disabilities will assist libraries and other service components of academic institutions to adopt a proactive position, as well as challenge staff assumptions of service expectations and information needs.

Academic and public libraries are continuing to transform as the information landscape changes, expanding their missions into new service roles that call for improved organizational performance and accountability. Since Assessing Service Quality premiered in 1998, receiving the prestigious Highsmith Library Literature Award, scores of library managers and administrators have trusted its guidance for applying a customer-centered approach to service quality and performance evaluation. This extensively revised and updated edition explores even further the ways technology influences both the experiences of library customers and the ways libraries themselves can assess those experiences. With a clear focus on real-world application, the authors: Challenge conventional thinking about the utility of input, output, and performance metrics by suggesting new ways to think about the evaluation and assessment of library services; Explain service quality and customer satisfaction, and demonstrate how they are separate but intertwined; Identify procedures for qualitatively and quantitatively measuring both service quality and satisfaction; Encourage libraries to take action by presenting concrete steps they can take to become more customer-centric; Offer a range of customer-related metrics that provide insights useful for library planning and decision making, such as surveys and focus groups. This book shows how to nurture an environment of continuous improvement through effective service quality assessment.

Convergence and collaboration enable an academic library to be more fully engaged with its campus. In its simplest form, convergence is defined as joint activities of a campus's units to further their shared mission of supporting teaching, learning, and inquiry. Convergence, which involves collaboration in both organizational structures and service delivery, leads to users benefiting from contact with individuals who have relevant expertise. Collaboration also may lead to convergence of collections, thereby enhancing library service to an institution's constituents.Specific examples of convergence/collaboration include centers for teaching excellence, tutor and writing centers, information arcades, facilities for multi-media production and delivery, information and learning commons, cafes, photocopying centers; centers for distance education, participation in the use of course management software (e.g., Blackboard) to make library resources available to classes digitally and to make students more information literate, publishing (e.g., university presses and digital collections, including institutional repositories), counseling and career centers, and services for students for whom English is a secondary language (mostly in community colleges).For anyone interested in how academic libraries can be more closely tied to the various missions of the colleges/universities in which they reside.

A thorough explanation of how a voice-of-the-customer program for libraries can give customers the opportunity to make their opinions known, enabling libraries to develop services that meet or exceed their patrons' changing expectations.

The purpose of this volume is to supplement statistical textbooks and to inform library managers and library school students about the application of selected statistical tests and the interpretation of statistical findings.

For library managers and administrators, the key to the data's usefulness is knowing how to extract and apply the most relevant information to managing a library and improving accountability. A companion volume to Getting Started with Evaluation, this guide illustrates how to use data to support value, collection use, benchmarking, and other best practices.

A practical manual on the process of library outcomes assessment. It includes detailed case studies and discusses how to: prepare an outcomes assessment strategy; execute your plan by collecting and analyzing data; and measure the value of the services you are providing.

It is composed of five domains: Knowing your emotions, Managing your emotions, Motivating yourself, Recognizing and understanding other people's emotions, and Managing relationships (managing the emotions of others).

Revisiting Outcomes Assessment in Higher Education complements rather than updates Hernon and Dugan's 2004 Outcomes Assessment in Higher Education.

This volume is issue-oriented. By showing that issues relating to topics such as access to government information resources, collection development, and administration are not unique to documents librarianship, it places selected topics in a wider context. The book's objectives are to identify and discuss critically important issues related to increasing access to government information resources, to offer solutions and recommendations by which government information resources and services can be made more effective, to encourage more assessments that examine issues across levels of government, to emphasize the importance and need for a research base related to government information resources and services, and to encourage a critical assessment of current practices and traditional assumptions.

For library managers, this book explains evaluation and assessment research and identifies the components of proper execution, such as planning, decision making, and accountability.

. . . the editors prevail upon students, scholars, information professionals and policy makers to study the issues further in order to deepen the understanding of government information and positively affect policy decisions. - Journal of Government Information

This books provides a detailed overview of conflicting issues and practices related to Federal government information policies and the distribution of federal information through print and non-print information handling technologies.

Conceived as a companion to The Next Library Leadership (Libraries Unlimited, 2003), Making a Difference includes not only a discussion of effective attributes, but of issues central to the development of leadership qualities, strategies, and dispositions.

The definitive guide to U.S. government information on the Web has been expanded and updated with the latest information from the current administration, including material on the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and the E-Government Act of 2002. Peter Hernon, one of the country's foremost authorities on government information, and his colleagues provide additional Web sites and offer valuable strategies for effectively accessing and using government information online.

This much needed work addresses a topic of increasing importance and urgency: the shortage of individuals attracted to professional careers in librarianship, and the subsequent consequences for leadership positions, particularly library directorship. Through extensive interviews and a thorough review of the existing literature, the authors-all highly respected for their exceptional leadership and contributions to library science-assess what constitutes effective leadership and identify the traits needed by the next generation of academic and public library directors.The authors argue that library directors must be both managers and leaders, and that LIS students and graduates need appropriate support in seeking out upper level positions and exercising leadership. They present tools for assessing leadership and suggest strategies that individuals can use to prepare themselves for leadership positions and the challenges that lie ahead. A detailed bibliography completes the work. An important contribution to the field of library and information science, this eye-opening study is essential reading for anyone in the profession.