Reports results of materials availability surveys conducted in public library systems and discusses implications of the findings for validity, reliability, and usefulness of fill rates as measures of library performance. A second paper presents another view in defense of fill rates, and responses by both authors are also included. (MES)

Surveys conducted in 142 urban public libraries examined customer satisfaction, comparisons with other libraries, and factors affecting satisfaction. Overall, customers were satisfied with their libraries but experienced different levels of satisfaction based on convenience, availability of materials and information, and services facilitating…

Discusses results of a national survey that was designed to describe the current consumer market for public library services and Internet services. Investigated the reasons they used each service, the decision criteria used when choosing one provider over the other, and how they evaluated the performance of each. (LRW)

In-house surveys of patrons conducted in 20 public libraries in a county library system revealed no meaningful differences among the samples in reasons given for selecting the library to visit or in their uses of the library, although meaningful differences were found in their evaluations of the libraries' facilities. (Author/EM)

Describes a procedure for identifying a group of potential users from among current nonusers in a sample of adults drawn from the library's community. This procedure was designed for use in conducting marketing surveys for public libraries. (Author/CHC)

This paper reports past performance data for document delivery services provided by two libraries at University of Minnesota (Walter Library, Institute of Technology Libraries) and results of survey of faculty served by these services. Differences between users and nonusers, reasons for nonuse, and correlates of extent of use are discussed. (EJS)

Reviews current state of the art pertaining to measurement and use of the construct of user satisfaction (user's self-reported degree of satisfaction with library services) and reports results of survey of 623 public library patrons measuring user satisfaction, evaluation of services, library use, and individual characteristics. Twenty-six sources…

Three urban library systems asked their patrons to read descriptions of seven library roles and to select the role that best described why they were visiting the library. From these patron surveys, each library system was able to develop profiles of the roles that its libraries play in the community. (Contains two references.) (SLW)

This study was designed both to determine if patrons are able to discern differences in library performance and to investigate relationships between patron evaluation and use of public libraries. Highlights include study procedures, instrumentation, data collection, results of data analyses, and interpretation of results. Eighteen references are…