Evaluation and quality libraries performance : a view from Portugal and Brazil

Abstract

The main purpose of this poster is to give a view of some projects, on evaluation and quality in libraries performances, which have been developed in Portugal and Brazil during the last ten years. Library services quality is a concept that librarians around of the world has been adopted, that is a way for assessing user needs, satisfaction, and better performance at the libraries. The two academic librarians present a brief description of some methods to obtain performance and quality measurements in academic libraries, public libraries and documentation centers, including influences and characteristics, of Portuguese and Brazilian ways. EFQM Excellence Model, MonitorDoc, ISO11620:1998, PASBU – Academic Library Services Evaluation, benchmarking, SERVQUAL, LibQUAL and PAQ - Quality Evaluation Program are the issues which involve fundamental concepts on the improvement on quality management in libraries. EFQM Excellence Model was introduced in 1992 and represent nine fundamental concepts to assess an organisation’s progress towards excellence. The nine concepts are the following: leadership, people, policy and strategy, partnerships and resources, processes, people results, customer results, society results and key performance results. MonitorDoc is a Portuguese model, based in EFQM Excellence Model, created to evaluate the quality of libraries and documentation centers. PASBU – Academic Library Services Evaluation is a project that reports the performance evaluation in a Portuguese academic library during 2001. The methods used, based in concept of performance “indicator”, are ISO 11610:1998, International Guidelines for Performance Measurement in Academic Libraries published by IFLA and some European Commission - DGXIII recommendations. This model established library’s impact in the institution in which is implanted. Several services quality has been evaluated according to performance “indicator”- “user satisfaction”.