Alumni: Another Piece of the Puzzle - The Study of Alumni Service Quality in a New Zealand Academic Library

Abstract

Alumni are recognized as one of the academic library user groups although traditionally alumni were only considered as donors. This paper briefly reviewed the background of alumni studies and library service quality studies. According to the previous research, there is an absence of studies about alumni’s expectation and perception toward library services. A better understanding of alumni library memberships’ service quality can help the library to develop more suitable services and programmes for alumni, which is beneficial to the library, the alumni office and the university.

This research measured the service quality of library alumni service in three dimensions, reliability, library staff and library resources. The results indicated alumni are mostly comfortable with the library services. Reliability was the most important service quality dimension which received the highest rating from alumni. The result also suggested that alumni expect the library membership package to provide access to a bigger collection of e-journals and databases.