Abstract
The objective of this study is to identify the dimensions that determine the customers' evaluation of service quality in academic libraries. We selected one university library each in England and Finland and two in Japan to conduct a questionnaire survey based on the GAP theory of SERVQUAL that has led discussions on the assessment of service quality in both theories and practices of marketing. Since the actual delivery of information as a service outcome is as important as the service process in libraries, attributes inherent to library services were incorporated into the questionnaire. Obtained data were put through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and it was shown that library service quality consists of 4 dimensions: "staff," "library as ba," "collection and access," and "organization," which are different from the 5 SERVQUAL dimensions: "tangibles," "reliability," "responsiveness," "assurance," and "empathy."
