portal: Libraries and the Academy

The LibQUAL+TM protocol solicits open-ended comments from users with regard to library service quality, gathers data on 22 core items, and, at the option of individual libraries, also garners ratings on five items drawn from a pool of more than 100 choices selected by libraries. In this article, the relationship of scores on these locally selected LibQUAL+TM augmentation items with LibQUAL+TM scores are examined for the first time. The results provide some guidance regarding which augmentation items do and do not add different information than the 22 core LibQUAL+TM items with respect to users' library service quality perceptions. These results may be helpful to future LibQUAL+TM users in selecting augmentation items because the results quantify the degrees of overlap of information from these items with the LibQUAL+TM core items. The findings also suggest that LibQUAL+TM scores are reasonably psychometrically valid.