Multiculturalism in public libraries & cultural dimensions of quality service : how will theory of multiculturalism help public libraries improve customer service?

Abstract

Cultural Diversity is today's society's reality. Public library needs to respond to the issue positively, however due to a lack of practical theory to practise multiculturalism in a library setting, multicultural services cannot be proactive. Several theories to adopt multiculturalism into the library are examined. Social multicultural paradigms provide thoughtful analysis to prepare to establish the multicultural library. British, Canada, New Zealand and American responses to cultural diversity in their community is also discussed. What is important is to value cultural diversity. Each of countries has different unique responses to the issue, since customer service is always a local issue. However, multicultural services aim to improve customer satisfaction rather than service quality. Therefore the issue of public libraries is to change multicultural services to service quality. An understanding to theory of culture leads to needs of acknowledgement that every customer is culturally different. Then multiculturalism becomes theory to improve the total library services. If the library becomesproactive to prepare serving any kinds of multicultural customers, the library services will be different. Multicultural theory does not only help predict or interpret customer expectations but also help enhance service quality of the total customer service.