The Quality Library: A Guide to Staff-Driven Improvement, Better Efficiency, and Happier Customers (review)

The authors of The Quality Library are independent consultants who have worked extensively with both public and academic libraries, especially in New York State and Indiana. In an earlier book, The Library's Continuous Improvement Fieldbook: 29 Ready-to-Use Tools (Chicago: American Library Association, 2003), Laughlin and Wilson provided instructions for using instruments such as consensograms, flowcharts, and scatter diagrams. Their new book is a comprehensive guide to implementing a customer-focused, employee-driven process for continuous improvement.

Although never explicitly labeled as such, the continuous improvement method is based on Total Quality Management (TQM). Each discrete process depends on inputs and produces outputs and is part of a larger system of interlocking parts. Any process can be improved by reducing variation, improving upstream processes, minimizing inspections, and investing in people. Librarians who remember the rise and fall of enthusiasm for TQM in the 1990s may be surprised to learn that the movement has not died or disappeared from the literature (see, for example, the 2007 special issue of Indiana Libraries on continuous improvement). It is true that TQM was not a success in many U.S. libraries that attempted it. It required a total re-engineering of organizational culture from the top down, which led to employee resistance or was simply too demanding. However, TQM principles of teamwork, customer focus, and evidence-based practice have been embraced by library management, as exemplified by the recent interest in LibQUAL™. Why not give TQM itself another look?

The first step in the cycle is to create a system map and identify areas needing improvement based on organizational mission and relevance to customers. The next step is to charter teams of front-line employees with a clearly defined mission and timetable to standardize the process and measure process performance by collecting data on time, cost, error rate, quantity, or satisfaction. Statistical analysis of the data will indicate whether further improvement in the process is needed, at which point new ideas are incorporated, implemented, tested, and measured in turn. The authors end the book by proposing the establishment of a library-wide team to manage and oversee the continuous improvement cycle.

On its own terms, the book is largely successful. Any library can learn from its systems approach and consider adopting some of the specific techniques. The authors are disingenuous in avoiding any reference to TQM, but they do succeed in avoiding exaggerated claims. Instructions are based on real-life experience and abundantly illustrated with charts, diagrams, and working documents. Two appendices list dozens of library processes (for example, answering reference questions by mail, installing new software) and process measures (such as the number of sources of dollars for the library, average customer wait time, and so on) that could be used by any library.

As for currency, the authors mention database acquisition, 24/7 service, and information literacy outreach, but some of the most likely prospects for standardization such as digitization, Web site maintenance, and document delivery are barely addressed. The case has not been made that services such as reference and instruction can or should be standardized and measured in the same way as cataloging, acquisitions, and circulation. Although examples are provided from universities in New York State, the book is geared slightly more to public than to academic libraries.

As important as TQM's positive recommendations are, its strictures and negative insights are persuasively articulated in this book. One is the insistence on rigorous collection and interpretation of data and another is that 90 percent of responsibility for success is attributable to the system, not the people. The warning against setting targets and numerical goals is timely in this era of standardized testing; the authors point out that such targets usually lead to distortion of the process or distortion of the data. Finally, it should be kept in mind that process improvement is not...