Washington DC—LibQUAL+® is pleased to announce that three libraries have been selected to receive in-kind grants in 2012. The selection of grantees was based on financial need, contribution to the growth of LibQUAL+®, and potential for surfacing best practices in the area of library service improvements. The 2012 LibQUAL+® grant recipients are:

Lincoln University

Lincoln University of Missouri is a historically black, 1890 land-grant, public institution founded in 1866 by the men of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantries and their white officers, for the special benefit of freed African Americans. Lincoln University holds an open enrollment policy, admitting students who may benefit from, and contribute to, its educational programs, regardless of age, race, creed, sex, color, religion, national origin, or handicap.

Dean Jerome Offord, Jr. and his colleagues created an aggressive project timeline for LibQUAL+®, the fruits of which will help guide them as they rethink their organizational structure, staffing roles, and service delivery method. The Lincoln University plan of action “includes the development of a library strategic plan that will implement assessment feedback from users, guide service delivery decisions, and provide an opportunity to create a recurring assessment life cycle, and help create a vision for a user-centered library.”

The University of the West Indies

The University of the West Indies (UWI) is a regional university serving the Commonwealth Caribbean with main campuses located at Mona, Jamaica; Cave Hill, Barbados; and St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. The UWI Mona Campus Library is the intellectual hub of the university community and serves a population of over 14,500, which includes a growing international student population as the university also hosts students on its Exchange and Study Abroad Programmes.

Ms. Beverley Lashley, Head, Science Branch Library and Coordinator of the Caribbean Disaster Information Network (CARDIN) along with the Marketing Team, are looking forward to increasing the diversity of the LibQUAL+® community. The UWI Mona Library had previously embarked on mini customer service surveys, but is now ready to take advantage of LibQUAL+®’s “evaluation of the experience of the customer which is really what is needed to analyze any shortfall in our services” from both a quantitative and qualitative standpoint.

University of Cyprus

The University of Cyprus was established in 1989 and admitted its first students in 1992. It is located at Nicosia, the capital city of the island of 840,000 citizens. The university was founded in response to the growing intellectual needs of the Cypriot people, and despite its brief history, the University of Cyprus has earned the respect of the international academic community and the appreciation of Cypriot society.

Ms. Elena Diomidi, Librarian-Coordinator of the User Information Services Sector, notes that the University of Cyprus Library intends to have a “continuous improvement program that will be based extensively on the results and outcomes of the LibQUAL+® survey. The aim is to measure, evaluate, target improvements, and re-measure our performance to the standards of our stakeholders and to the international best practices.”

Information about applying for a 2013 LibQUAL+® grant will be available in March. There are two deadlines for submitting a grant application: June 15, 2012, and December 14, 2012.

LibQUAL+® is a suite of services that libraries use to solicit, track, understand, and act upon users’ opinions of service quality. These services are offered to the international library community by the Association of Research Libraries. The program’s centerpiece is a rigorously tested Web-based survey bundled with training that helps libraries assess and improve library services, change organizational culture, and market the library. This assessment protocol has been used by more than 1,200 libraries across the globe since 2000. LibQUAL+® is located on the Web at http://www.libqual.org/ .

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 126 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at http://www.arl.org/ .

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