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Funding and governance of library and information services for visually impaired people: international case studies

Part2:Country studies

Australia

Measuring success

Vision Australia has a number of mechanisms in place to measure how well it is satisfying users.

Targets include the range and depth of material available; speed of supplying item;users’ satisfaction with the service across a range of measures

Market research and development team suggests Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to the executive, based on comparisons with like organisations. Targets are reviewed annually, with a philosophy of continuous improvement. The baseline (as VA is a new organisation) was a survey of a representative sample of library clients carried out in 2005. The survey will be repeated 2007 to look at trends. Indicators covered: customer service; professionalism of staff; effectiveness of services in relation to vision and missions/values of VA; preferred formats; internet and PC usage; adherence to disability service standards. Also use focus groups and did a research pilot with 700 clients to test new digital service delivery model.

Universities have a variety of targets and means of measurement, for example Rodski Research is a company used by approximately half of Australian and New Zealand universities to conduct surveys of library client satisfaction.

However, CAUL believes user satisfaction is not well measured

“There is a question in the Rodski survey, a client satisfaction survey used by university libraries, that relates to “Aids provided for users with disabilities” but it has limited usefulness as a measure of success. Apart from the Rodski survey, individual institutions may conduct their own client satisfaction surveys.”

Individual universities

UTAS: The library has a maximum 6-week turnaround time for providing reading materials. Academic staff are required to make unit outlines and reading lists available 6 weeks prior to the start of semester

Generally, tertiary education libraries attempt to measure their success in providing services to students with a range of disabilities ? including vision disabilities. Clients are surveyed on a range of Library related issues.