An Exploratory Study of Library User Satisfaction with Reference to Physical Facilities and Services at Einstein College of Arts and Science

The study examined student satisfaction with the library at Einstein College of Arts and Science in relation to the physical facilities and services it provides, using a theory based on expectations, confirmation, and service quality, and comparing the results with recent academic library research indexed in Scopus. The results show that tangible facility aspects such as furniture, lighting, ventilation, and maintenance, as well as traditional services like reprographic, circulation, and reference services, lead to high levels of user satisfaction. However, the reading room and drinking water facilities among the physical facilities, and the internet and bulletin board services among the services, are clear areas that need the attention of administrators. This results similar to the disappointment over internet access that was separately recorded by Rahman et al. (2026) and the difficulties experienced in finding information that were reported by Faizan and Munshi (2025) in other well-equipped Indian institutional libraries. It was found that gender, how often one visits the library, the information sources used, the sources consulted, and the users' views on the usefulness of the resources were all significantly linked to clusters of overall satisfaction, while the area of residence, the reason for the visit, and the type of barrier encountered were not. The surprising negative relationship between satisfaction with physical facilities and satisfaction with services, mainly due to the Library Orientation Programme, indicates that library management should regard orientation and instructional services as a separate area requiring improvement rather than believing that improving the infrastructure will automatically result in greater service satisfaction, this represents a practical managerial adjustment of the one-factor service-quality assumption that underlies previous applications of the LibQUAL+™ method (Cook et al., 2001). As an example, the results show that library administrators should concentrate on improving the atmosphere of the reading room and the availability of drinking water when carrying out physical improvements, and on improving internet bandwidth/connectivity and using bulletin boards for communication when making service improvements, while at the same time making use of the good performance of staff-led services such as reference and circulation, in line with the mediating role of staff behaviour as found by Rahman et al. (2026). In terms of academic contribution, the study shows the advantage of combining descriptive, chi-square, and dual-level (composite and item) correlation analysis in a single empirical framework for research into library user satisfaction, building on the methodological approaches seen in recent Scopus-indexed academic library studies from India Faizan & Munshi, (2025) and providing a replicable model for similar institutional evaluations.

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