Abstract

MARY FURNIVAL, Ariadne Chloe; TERUO OUCHI, Marcos  and  LUIZ PINTO, Euzébio. The 'mistery shopping' technique used as a tool of service assesment in public libraries: a Brazilian experience involving Biblioteconomy undergraduates. Rev. Interam. Bibliot [online]. 2012, vol.35, n.1, pp.27-38. ISSN 0120-0976.

In the context of a brief review of some methods and techniques found in the literature on the subject of service evaluation, this article reports the experience of the application of the mystery shopping technique for the assessment of service attendance to the public in a network of public libraries in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Details of how the technique was applied and the tabulated results are presented. Excluding the control group, 60% of the evaluated libraries attained the value of 'excellent' for the variable 'informing', which refers to the ability of the professional helping the user to solve his questions and searches. This result is considered to be highly satisfactory. In relation to the form employed by the personal in charge with the mystery shoppers, the overall evaluation was also very good, with 50% of the libraries attaining the value 'excellent' for the attribute 'greeting//welcoming approach'. The application of the technique occurred in the context of the course module 'Reference and Information Services' offered on the undergraduate LIS course in a federal university in Brazil, with the students of the course acting as the mystery shoppers for the services provided by the assessed public libraries. In this way it was hoped that the exercise might contribute to forming reflexive librarians with the future ability to propose new evidence-based services, procedures and measures.

Keywords : public libraries; service evaluation; enduser service; mystery shopping; reference service.

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