No visitor to the US capital, Washington DC, can fail to notice the dominance downtown of the Smithsonian Institution. Redstone building after redstone building comprise a series of museums and facilities across the centre of town, which show off American history, natural history and science and attract millions of visitors each year. But what is much less known is that the Smithsonian Institut...

An i~J!Jas designed to assess the reference outcome in terms of patron report of success. It was theorized that patrons were capable of separating reports of success in finding what was wanted from reports of general overall satisfaction, if given a suitably constructed instrument. Utilized in design were Cronbach 's theories on response set and Cuadra's theories on the fail-safe reaction. A su...

In the library literature, a great deal of interest in patron-driven collection development has recently been expressed, especially in those programs that link acquisitions with interlibrary loan. However, the implementation of such programs has been limited, at least in part because of concerns over the potential for wasteful spending. The authors will attempt to address this common concern by...

h S T R A C T IMPROVINGTHE QUALITY OF PUBLIC SERVICES involves quantifying patron perceptions. Using a questionnaire devised by Van House, Weil, and McClure (1990);combining it with the concept of service dimensions and service imperatives based on the work done by Berry, Zeithaml, and Parasuraman (1990); and coding patron comments from the questionnaire as either positive or negative; this pro...