C S S R 0 8’ 0 9 14 - 15 March 2009

C O N F E R E N C E ON S C I E N T I F I C & S O C I A L R E S E A R C H

USERS’ PERCEPTIONS ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF UiTM

LIBRARIES IN CREATING A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Norliya Ahmad Kassim1 and Khasiah Zakaria2

1
Faculty of Information Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, MALAYSIA
2
Perpustakaan Tun Abdul Razak 1, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam
1
drnorliya@yahoo.com, 2khasiah_z@salam.uitm.edu.my

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study is to investigate users’ perceptions on the contributions of Universiti Teknologi
MARA (UiTM) Libraries in creating a learning environment. This is measured by the users’
satisfaction level on the services, collection/ information, activities and staff’s attitude. Using
questionnaires as the instrument, respondents were asked to give their opinion on their satisfaction
level on the statements regarding the four main dimensions stated above. The instrument was
distributed to a sample of 650 final year students from Faculty of Information Management, Faculty of
Administrative Science and Public Policy, and Faculty of Law of UiTM in Shah Alam. A total of 534
(82%) respondents returned the questionnaires. The results of the study revealed that the library users
were only quite satisfied with the services, collection/ information, and activities of the library as a
whole. The findings also revealed that users were least satisfied with the attitude of the library staff
compared with other aspects of the library evaluated. Among the four aspects of the library,
respondents were relatively most satisfied with collection/ information (mean score = 3.27), followed
by services to users (mean score = 3.18), library activities (mean score = 3.16) and staff attitude (mean
score = 3.06) in that order. The information produced through this study will be of use to the
improvement of library services and betterment of the library profession, and serve as a contribution to
the body of knowledge in the area of user satisfaction on libraries’ contribution and their services to
users.
Keywords: Users’ perception, library contribution, library services, learning environment, Universiti
Teknologi MARA

1. INTRODUCTION

In a university setting, empowering learning environment ensures high-quality learning. A

contemporary approach to learning claims that learning takes place not only in classroom settings, but
wherever learners have an access to information sources or means and use them for solving problems or
constructing a new meaning (Longworth, 1999; Jonassen & Land, 2000). In the context of this new
learning paradigm, an academic library plays a significant role. The learning environment of a university
depends on the conditions that are classified as competence-related, material-organization, psychological,
sociocultural and study conditions (Juceviciene & Lipinskiene, 2001). Other perspective can be looked
into are the services for users as well as the activities for users such as learning and training.
Satisfying users’ needs in the academic libraries should be the primary objective of libraries and
librarians. Even in academic institutions, user’s needs and expectations vary and every year, new students
come to the university with different needs and expectations. Furthermore, new technologies, databases,
and more innovative systems for accessing information, have made the library more complicated and
challenging for librarians and users alike. The abundance of resources available and the difficulty in
being able to evaluate these resources also create problems for users. Finally, the inability to easily
identify the specific use of a library’s services because of the new technologies, and the difficulty to
access information sources can all contribute to user dissatisfaction among academic library users.
Therefore, this study which assessed library’s performance on services infrastructure/place/space,

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collection/information, activities, and attitudes shown by the library staff in creating a learning
environment may contribute to this context.
The main objective of the study is to determine the users’ perceptions on the UiTM Libraries’
contributions in creating a learning environment. The users’ perceptions are measured by their level of
satisfaction on the areas that the UiTM Libraries offer that include the areas of services, infrastructure,
collections, activities, and staff’s attitude shown towards users. The specific objectives of this study are to
identify the satisfaction level of UiTM Libraries’ users regarding the libraries’ services,
infrastructure/place/space, collection/information, activities, and attitudes shown by the library staff in
creating a learning environment. However, this paper has omitted the report on infrastructure/place/space
in order to keep this paper to a considerable length.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Each year new students enter the learning environment with varying library usage and information
gathering skills. Millson-Martula and Menon (1995) state that one element of high quality service is “the
incorporation of users’ personal needs and expectations into the development of programs and service”.
The concept of user satisfaction in the library literature likewise has evolved to include a broader focus on
the users’ perspective of the library. Applegate (1997) defines user “satisfaction… as a personal,
emotional reaction to a library service or product”. Bitner and Hubbert (1994) suggest that it consists of
service encounter satisfaction, “the consumer’s dis/satisfaction with a discrete service encounter,” and
overall service satisfaction, “the consumer’s overall dis/satisfaction with the organization based on all
encounters and experiences with that particular organization”. In addition, a characteristic of service
delivery is the simultaneous nature of production and consumption (Zeithaml & Bitner, 1996). Customers
are usually involved in some (if not all) of the production processes and therefore have an impact on the
outcomes of the service delivery and their satisfaction with it.
Bowen (1986), Mills and Morris (1986), and Kelley, Donnelly and Skinner (1990), have shown that
participation, or the use of customers as “partial employees”, can improve productivity for providers as
well as improving service quality and customer satisfaction. Bateson (1985) note that problems in the
service encounter are often due to conflicts over who is in control of the service interaction, and hence, a
way of increasing control for the customer is to offer alternatives or choices within the service setting,
such as providing on-site or remote access to electronic resources, loan or photocopying of printed
materials, self-service or staff service facilities, silent study or discussion areas, on-site or telephone or
email or postal reference consultation. Service providers must develop mechanisms in order to ensure that
customers provide the required information and effort to facilitate the service encounter and outcome
(Kelley, Donnelly & Skinner, 1990).
Gronroos (1990) proposes that service quality can be divided into two dimensions, namely technical
quality and functional quality. Technical quality represents the outcome of the service, and functional
quality relates to the service process. This study will focus on aspects of functional quality. The functional
quality has a clear direct impact on technical quality and both have an impact on customer satisfaction and
library productivity. The library’s environment can affect students’ perceptions of the manner in which
they believe they can use the library, and therefore modification of the environment, in some cases, should
lead to an increased usage of library resources by students (Watson, 2001). Studies of other literatures also
reveal that although they are related, the concept of “service quality” is different from satisfaction and has
offered an alternative direction to assess library performance. Satisfaction is often a short-term measure
whereas service quality evolves over time and relates to the customer’s developed attitude toward a
service. Within the library literature, reported research has accepted the concept from the gap theory of
service quality, developed by the marketing research team of Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml (1985).
They define service quality in terms of reducing the gap between customers’ expectations for excellent
service and their perceptions of services delivered. In the studies conducted by Coleman, Yi, Blair, and
Chollet (1997), Edwards and Browne (1995), Hernon and Calvert (1996), Nitecki (1996), and White and
Abels (1995), the five-dimensional SERVQUAL model and the twenty-two-item scale proposed by
Parasuraman, Berry, and Zeithaml (1991) are prominent. In the perspective of academic libraries, a
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detailed study by Nitecki (1996) highlighted several problems with the SERVQUAL measures. Hernon
and Calvert (1996) have concluded that “it is not possible to develop a generic instrument applicable to all
libraries in all circumstances”.

3. METHODOLOGY

A survey research method was adopted to address the research questions. The study was distributed to
a sample of 650 final year undergraduate students of the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) from the
Faculty of Information Management, Faculty of Administrative Science and Public Policy, and Faculty of
Law of UiTM, Shah Alam. The sample is stratified according to the actual student population of each
faculty, but within each faculty, the respondents were selected among the final year students of the
faculties. The libraries at the university are also known as Perpustakaan Tun Abdul Razak (PTAR). The
research instrument in this study is a questionnaire. The response rate was 82% or 534 responses. A
descriptive statistic was used in the analysis of this study. Mean ranking, median, and standard deviation
were performed to analyze the descriptive part of the analysis.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The distribution of respondents by faculty shows that almost half (49.6%) of the sample is made up of
students from the Faculty of Information Management (IS), followed by those from the Faculty of
Administrative Science and Public Policy (AM) (29.3%), and students from the Faculty of Law (LW)
(21.1%). Regarding the frequency of library visitation, most (33.7%) of the respondents goes to PTAR
library more than once a week, while those who go twice a month make up 20.5 percent of the sample.
Only a few (0.4%) has never been to the library at all. The study also suggests that many of the
respondents visit library for more than one reason. The largest proportion (63.7%) of the respondents goes
to library to browse materials while the smallest proportion (2.1%) of the respondents visits the library to
attend a library program. The reliability tests that were carried out show that the statements used to
measure the level of satisfaction of respondents in the four components are reliable (all the Cronbach’s
Alpha values are >0.9).

4.1 Analysis on User Satisfaction

In this report, user satisfaction is examined through four aspects: (1) Services to users; ((2) Collection
and information; (3) Activities; and (4) Staff (attitude). The level of satisfaction for each of the four
dimensions is gauged using a group of statements on a five-point Likert scale of 1 (Very dissatisfied) to 5
(Very satisfied). The number of statements under the four dimensions vary from 4 for Activities to as
many as 19 for Services for Users as shown in Table 1. Collection and Information has 12 while Staff has
seven statements.
Before the analysis proper, reliability tests were performed on each dimension to determine their
internal consistency, hence their reliability. The results show that the values of the Cronbach’s alphas are
all in excess of 0.9, indicating that all dimensions are reliable and can be used for further analysis.
The following subsections present the summary statistics of each item in each of the four dimensions of
satisfaction. These summary statistics are presented to determine the variations of the responses to the
individual items in each dimension.

4.2 Satisfaction on the Quality of Services

Table 1 presents the median, mean and the standard deviation of the scores of the individual statements
for the quality of service dimension. Based on the overall mean of 3.18 and median of 3.24, it can be
concluded that the respondents are divided in their opinion on the quality of services provided by PTAR to
users. The individual measures indicate that the respondents are satisfied with only two aspects of the
services offered by the library system: (1) the opening hours is suitable (median = 4.0; mean = 3.51); and
(2) the library has proper signage (median = 4.0; mean = 3.50).

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On the other hand, they are only quite satisfied with 16 aspects of library services which are generally
perceived to be important. This conclusion is based on the median values of 3.0 and mean values between
3.0 and less than 3.5. In descending order of satisfaction, these are: operating an enquiry/reference service;
performing services right; willingness to help users; readiness to respond to users; attending to users in a
caring manner; providing photocopy services; providing inter-library loan services, ensuring self-check
machine usable; maintaining error-free records; the friendliness of reference staff; giving access to theses
in print formats; providing document delivery service; having users’ best interest at heart; providing
longer hours for internet access; providing error free services; and providing services for students with
disabilities.
The respondents are least satisfied with the availability of books displayed on shelves (median = 3.0;
mean = 2.91). It is presumed that this opinion is referring to the promptness of the staff in putting books
back on the correct shelves, rather than leaving them lying around on tables or trolleys. When books are
not put back on the correct shelves immediately, it makes it difficult for the users to locate the books they
need.
The results also show that the opinions of the respondents are quite consistent across all the 19 items as
indicated by the small variation in the values of the standard deviations which range from 0.780
(performing services right) to 1.134 (provide photocopying services).

Table 1: Mean Scores for Quality of Services

Std.
Statement Median Mean
Deviation

1. Opening hours are suitable 4.0 3.51 0.999

2. Has proper signage 4.0 3.50 0.881

3. Operate an enquiry/reference services 3.0 3.37 0.843

4. Performing services right 3.0 3.36 0.780

5. Willingness to help others 3.0 3.25 0.886

6. Readiness to respond to user 3.0 3.23 0.835

7. Deal with users in caring manner 3.0 3.20 0.843

8. Provides photocopy services 3.0 3.18 1.134

9. Provide inter-library loan services 3.0 3.16 0.977

10. Self-check machine is usable 3.0 3.14 1.019

11. Maintain error free records 3.0 3.12 0.828

12. Reference staff are friendly 3.0 3.11 0.936

13. Give access to theses in printed format 3.0 3.11 0.995

14. Provide document delivery services 3.0 3.09 0.927

15. Users’ best interest in heart 3.0 3.04 0.874

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16. Provides longer hours for Internet 3.0 3.04 1.077

access

17. Error free services 3.0 3.02 0.884

18. Provide services for students with 3.0 3.01 1.007

disabilities

19. Books are available on the shelves 3.0 2.91 0.997

Overall satisfaction 3.24 3.18 0.614

4.3 Satisfaction on Collection/ Information

Table 2 shows the overall and individual mean scores of the 12 statements to measure the satisfaction
of respondents on the library’s collection/information. Overall, the level of satisfaction is also average as
indicated by the median score of 3.33 and the mean score of 3.27. Compared with the previous
dimension, collection and information is better than for quality of services. Based on the median scores of
4.0, the majority of the respondents are satisfied with the availability of past exam papers (mean = 3.48)
and OPAC stations (mean =3.40). They are only quite satisfied with the other aspects of collection/
information with mean scores ranging from 3.34 (user-friendly catalog) to 3.05 (library kiosk information
are up-to-date).
Table 2: Mean Scores for Collection and Information

Statement Median Mean Std.

Deviation

1. Past exam papers are available 4.0 3.48 0.940

2. OPAC stations are available 4.0 3.40 0.942

3. User-friendly catalog 3.0 3.34 1.021

4. Comprehensive online databases 3.0 3.32 0.946

5. Digital collection are accessible 3.0 3.29 0.931

6. Library portal gives up-to-date information 3.0 3.28 0.923

7. Comprehensive multimedia resources 3.0 3.25 0.879

8. Comprehensive books collection 3.0 3.25 0.948

9. Comprehensive theses collection 3.0 3.22 0.853

10. Complete relevant journals 3.0 3.16 0.971

11. Resources added to collection regularly 3.0 3.09 0.943

12. Library kiosk information are up-to-date 3.0 3.05 0.945

Overall satisfaction 3.33 3.27 0.740

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4.5 Satisfaction on Library Activities

Table 3 presents the mean scores of the four statements used to measure the satisfaction of respondents
on the library’s range of activities such as teaching, learning and training. Overall, the respondents are
divided in their opinion on the library activities as indicated by the median score of only 3.0 and mean
score of only 3.16. Compared with the other three dimensions discussed above, the level of satisfaction
on library activities is the lowest.
Their satisfaction on the individual items is also average as indicated by the median scores of also 3.0
for all of them. The mean scores range from 3.18 (library skills lecture) to 3.10 (ICT skill training). The
responses are also consistent across the four items as indicated by the small variation in the values of the
standard deviations.

Table 3: Mean Scores for Activities

Statement Median Mean Std.

Deviation

1. Library skills lecture 3.0 3.18 0.901

2. Library orientation 3.0 3.16 0.895

3. Information literacy training 3.0 3.14 0.885

4. ICT skills training 3.0 3.10 0.887

Overall satisfaction 3.0 3.16 0.823

4.6 Satisfaction on the Attitude of Library Staff

The summary statistics for the satisfaction towards the attitude of the library staff are given in Table 4.
The overall median score of 3.0 and the mean score of 3.06 indicate that the respondents are least satisfied
with the attitude of the staff compared with other aspects of the library evaluated.
The median scores for all items are 3.0 indicating that the respondents are divided in their opinion.
Based on the mean scores, on the average, the respondents are quite satisfied with six of the seven
elements. Among the six statements, the mean score is highest for library staff have neat appearance
(3.26) and lowest for library staff are available when needed (3.0). They are least satisfied with the role of
staff in motivating learning as indicated by the mean score of only 2.86.

Table 4: Mean Scores for Staff

Statement Median Mean Std. Deviation

1. Library staff have neat appearance 3.0 3.26 0.850

2. Library staff are knowledgeable 3.0 3.11 0.861

3. Reference staff are approachable 3.0 3.08 0.893

4. Library staff instill confidence 3.0 3.07 0.831

5. Library staff understand needs 3.0 3.05 0.865

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6. Library staff are available when needed 3.0 3.00 0.920

7. Library staff can motivate learning 3.0 2.86 0.927

Overall satisfaction 3.0 3.06 0.741

5. CONCLUSIONS
From the results of the study, the following implications are presented. These implications can be
recommendations for the management of UiTM Libraries and other university libraries to improve their
libraries’ services. First implication is the library staff should play an active role in learning and being a
life-long learner. This attitude of learning will motivate learning among users of the library. Second
implication is librarians should also do research on customer focus and user satisfaction. A university
renowned for its research works is normally supported by the extensive and quality library services and
activities. In order to understand research works, the librarians and staff must themselves be doing some
kind of research projects. In addition, the findings from this study prompt several recommendations for
future research work and developments in the area of services and library as a whole. Several possible
areas for future research are to study factors that impact the services to remote users, to study ways on
promoting services and user education, and to study the impact factors of services. Librarians with
lecturers must create active learning environments for students to ensure that educational outcomes are
positive and productive. Learning environments must become interactive, student-centered, dynamic, and
more creative to ensure that students will determine their own learning paths so they can ultimately gain
thinking and life-long learning skills.
This study has presented information from users of UiTM Libraries on their perceptions of the
libraries’ contribution in creating a learning environment. The goal is continuous improvement. Library
staff has to be involved in the process of turning libraries into service organizations with the focus on
users as customers, and programs and services that meet or exceed customer expectations. The elements
that determine expectations are identified; the reasons for gaps between customer expectations and service
performance are explored, and therefore, strategies for narrowing these gaps can be made. Services
provided by university libraries must be oriented to become better customer supporter and address their
problem-solving needs. It is hoped that the information produced through this study will be of use to the
improvement of library services and betterment of the library profession, and serve as a contribution to the
body of knowledge in the area of user satisfaction on libraries’ contribution and their services to users.

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