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Academic Library System

Notes Library services can be viewed as an open system with materials, resources and information
needs of customers as input. In other words, the activities involved in providing and using
library services are more interrelated than isolated. Depicts the interaction within a totally
integrated library system. While the library only exists for serving customers, the service
delivery system should be user-oriented. Although all functions and activities focus on customers,
the direct interaction between library and customers occurs in public services. That is, librarians
working in circulation, reference and access service respond and translate the customer’s
expectations to the technical service department and administrative management. Depending
on the ability of public services to accurately interpret customer requirements, all functions of
the library can be directed to satisfying the quality requirements and information needs of
customers.

8.1.1 Quality Management Approaches
Quality management approaches can be categorized broadly into three stages according to the
evolution of management control. Management can implement control before an activity commences,
while the activity occurs, or after the activity has been completed. Consequently, three types
of control are feed forward, concurrent and feedback. The most desirable type of management
control is feed forward control that is future-directed and takes place in advance of the actual
activity. Feed forward control is advantageous because it allows management to prevent anticipated
problems rather than having to cure them later and to avoid wasting resources. Concurrent
control, as its name implies, takes place while an activity is in progress. When control is
enacted while the activity is being performed, management can correct problems before they
become too costly. The most conventional means of control relies on feedback. The feedback
control takes place after the activity. However, a disadvantage of this approach is that the
damage will have already occurred by the time that the manager has the information to take
corrective actions. Consequently, feed forward control is the most economic approach and can
meet the requirement of customers, followed by concurrent control and feedback control,
respectively.

Did u know? Interestingly, quality management approaches developed and applied to
assess and improve product quality can be related to types of management
control from the perspective of an open system.

Quality management approaches were originally developed as being product-oriented. Feedback
control, an inspection-based quality control approach, was introduced to detect inferior products
at the after-production stage. Realizing that quality could not be improved by merely inspecting
the finished product, subsequent efforts switched the emphasis of quality management from
inspection to process control: from feedback control stage to concurrent control stage. The
underlying premise regarding quality in the concurrent control stage is that quality is equivalent
to meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Manufacturing products that reflect the diverse
needs of customers, is more of a function of good design than of good control of a process.
Therefore, quality management has gradually shifted to emphasis on the design phase: from
concurrent control stage to feed forward control stage. In the following, we discuss the three
approaches of quality management and related techniques.

8.1.2 Quality by Inspection

The inspection-based system was perhaps the first scientifically designed quality control system
to evaluate quality. The system is applied to incoming raw materials and parts for use as

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