Measures of library use and user satisfaction with academic library services

Library use and user satisfaction are multidimensional concepts. However, traditional methods of evaluation do not include appropriate global measures of these concepts. Two indices of library use and user satisfaction have been derived from a number of characteristics collected by means of a questionnaire that combined individual variable-scores and expressed them as a final score. One form of index was based on a simple approach producing a weighted sum of individual values scored for all surveyed items. The second form, based on the theory of factor analysis, especially the principal components procedure, highlighted the most important items defining either library use or user satisfaction. Thus, the indices verified the presence of any correlation between user satisfaction and library use and evaluated library activities and services at the libraries of the National University of Rwanda. They could be used to compare various libraries sharing the same baseline characteristics and profiles.