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INTRODUCTION

Today is designated as a knowledge age. In a rapidly changing and expanding diverse global

digital information environment, knowledge becomes an important role to develop economic

status of a nation as well as to transform the county into a world class one. This knowledge can be obtained only by serious efforts and not by inheritance. The advances in information and

communication technology moved the society towards the knowledge society. Furthermore,learning and education are also needed to be as an essential factor in this knowledge society. To

be fulfilled this requirement; libraries are one of the local resources to knowledge acquisition that

provides basic conditions for lifelong learning, independent decision making, and social,

economical and cultural development of individuals and social groups.

The term “Library” comes from Latin word “ Libraria”, which is the place where books, articles,

and documents are collected and gathered for public utilization. All operations and resources inthe library should support its key goal to deliver the information sources needed by the readers.

The traditional concept of a library is being redefined from a place to access paper records or books to one that also houses the most advanced media, including CD-ROM, the Internet, virtual

libraries, and remote access to a wide range of resources.

Libraries are social institutions which are mainly concerned with education, social and culturalactivities of the people in a society. They are the key generators of intangible capital in the

knowledge economy functioning as the main source of growth, competitiveness and

employment. Moreover, libraries can assist people in finding information and using it effectivelyfor personal and professional purposes.

In the modern world, the roles of library services are adapting to changing technologies,

information environment and customer expectations. Libraries are increasingly responsible notonly to provide traditional library information services but also to deliver online information

services according to the actual user needs. They need to keep up with their users’ expectationsto survive and service them. They need to become as the information knowledge navigators who

distill data into usable information. Hence as a community knowledge centre, today’s libraries

can provide all sorts of knowledge to people from all walks of life in all means.

Rationale of the Study

Nowadays, it becomes extremely difficult to clearly demarcate the spheres of the two types of

organizations – public and private. Although the activities of government agencies are defined as public administration, many private agencies also perform tasks which are strictly public service

or welfare oriented. On the other hand, many tasks, performed by the public agencies may be of

a private nature. Moreover, one group of thinkers like Urwick, Follet and Fayol are of the view

that administration is an indivisible entity and its basic principles are applicable equally to allorganizations whether public or private (Basu, 1994).



Today’s libraries are such kind of organizations which provide public services as a private

organization in nature. Though libraries are non-profit-organizations, they should be more

concerned on how to bring satisfactory services when offering information and data to readers.

In modern economy, the service sector today becomes dominate as nearly 70% of the world

GDP. Continuously, rendering quality service is a key for subsistence and success in anyorganization, more so in a service organization. One of the greatest challenges facing

organizations is the ever-growing competition, the continuous increase in customer expectations

and customers’ subsequent demands. In addition, customers are becoming increasingly critical of the service quality they experience (Kandampully, 1998).

With mounting customer expectations, explosions in technologies and content, and rising costs

and declining budgets, assessment activities have become a routine part of library management.Hence, it becomes important periodically to examine customer satisfaction with the library’s

collection, services, and information preferences in order to assure that customers’ changing

needs are continually being met.

As increased competition in knowledge service sector, improving service quality to gaincompetitive advantage is the only way to sustainable management of knowledge society.Consequently, organizations must view quality as an essential part of their strategic process in

order to be successful (Behesti and Lollar, 2003).

Historically, the quality of a library has been described in terms of its collection and measured bythe size of the library’s holdings and various counts of its uses. However measuring of library

quality based solely on collections has become obsolete. Alternative approaches to measure

quality emerge through marketing research in the business sector. The SERVQUAL model,which was developed by A. Parasuraman, Valarie A. Zeithaml and Leonard L. Berry, has

evolved as an instrument to measure service quality and what customers values as important.

SERVQUAL is a mechanism to shift the assessment of quality of a library from the traditions of measuring collection size and counting incidents of its uses, to begin investigating how the

provision of services relates to the library users’ service quality expectations (Nitecki, 1996).

Objectives of the Study

The main objective of the study is to examine the quality of library services provided by

American Centre Baldwin Library by exploring the customers’ satisfaction on services of that

library. To meet this objective, it is also intended to evaluate quality of library services expectedand perceived by the library users.

Scope and Limitations of the Study

For a library, customers are those who registered as members and they use the library for their acquisition of knowledge. This study mainly focuses on the registered members’ satisfaction on

using services rendered by the Baldwin Library. The study period is from 2010 to 2011. That



means the quality of library services is evaluated by asking questions to those who registered as

members and frequently visited the library during June 2010 to June 2011.

Due to limited time frame and budget factors, only some numbers of library members from

Baldwin Library are chosen for investigation during a certain period of time. To be more

comprehensive and representative, the study should not only conduct more samples members of Baldwin Library but also find out the service quality provided by other libraries in Yangon area.

Besides, it is more accurate and perfect if the survey used observation method rather than

questionnaires survey method.

Method of the Study

The study intends to use both descriptive and empirical analysis to arrive at conclusion and

recommendations. There are two sources of data – primary and secondary. Secondary data areobtained from periodic reports and relevant articles of Baldwin library, research papers, literature

reviews on previous study in this field, statistical data issued by government agencies and private

organizations, and the Internet. Primary data are collected from selected random samples of 100registered members and service providers in Baldwin Library, by using structured

questionnaires. Questionnaires are designed to make personal interview with librarian and library

staff about the services they offered by Baldwin Library in Yangon. Simple random sampling

method is used to choose sample library users to be asked about their expectations andsatisfactions on the services provided by the library with structured questionnaires. Finally, the

data are analyzed by using appropriate statistical software, SERVQUAL method and manually.

Organization of the Study

This study is organized into five chapters. The first one is an introductory chapter which

comprises rationale of the study, objectives of the study, scope and limitations of the study,methodology and sources of the study, and organization of the study. Chapter Two describes the

theoretical framework on service quality, service operations, customer satisfaction, and customer

perceived value. The profile of Baldwin Library in Yangon, and the services offered by that

library are provided in Chapter Three. Chapter Four reveals the analysis on the service qualityfor current situation of customer satisfaction and investigation of value added service given by

Baldwin Library. Finally, Chapter Five is concluded with findings, recommendations, and

suggestions for this study.

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