Questioning LibQUAL+ TM: Expanding its Assessment of Academic Library Effectiveness

This article examines LibQUAL+TM's instrument, fundamental assumption, and research approach and proposes a functional/technical model of academic library effectiveness. This expanded view of library effectiveness complements LibQUAL+TM, emphasizing it to be dependent upon users' experience of service delivery, as LibQUAL+TM recognizes. However, this broader model reveals that effectiveness also depends upon an academic library's operations, the constituency groups it serves, the types of value provided to them, the models for funding libraries, academic libraries' obligations, and library users' need for professional information assistance. Supplementing LibQUAL+TM, this broader approach provides a basis for demonstrating both immediate and cumulative academic library effectiveness.