DEAKIN UNIVERSITY Service Level Agreements Framework for Digital Library Quality of Service Management By Masitah Ahmad B. Sc. Information Studies (Hons) (Information Systems Management), UiTM MA (Edu.) Resources and Information Technology, UKM Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University November, 2015 DEDICATION My humble effort I dedicate to my sweet and loving, Husband, Mohd Nor Ismail. Whose affection, love, encouragement, prays day and night have sustained me to complete this work My father and mother, Mr. Ahmad and Madam. Rosseeda, Thank you for all your prayers that accompany my struggle, although we are a far apart. My late Father and Mother in Laws Mr. Ismail and Madam Sawiah May Allah bless both of you My brothers and My sister in-laws Masrom, Masri, Masrul Affandi, Nazrul Afandi, Siti Jaudah, Norli, Shida, Normah and Aisyah For their external love. My lovely nephew, Muhammad Zharif Ilham, Muhammad Zikri Ilman Whose love and confidence is a constant source of inspiration and encouragement And Along with my hard working and respected supervisor Prof. Jemal H. Abawajy Who has been a constant source of knowledge, kindness, patience, motivation and inspiration. iv Acknowledgement All praises to Allah, Alhamdulillah for everything, For the Good.. For the Bad And everything in between.. My deep gratitude goes first to my supervisor, Prof. Jemal H. Abawajy, who has the best attitude, the substance of a genius and who shared the excitement of six years of research discovery. I am fully indebted and very lucky to have a very good supervisor like Prof. Jemal, who has always believed in my abilities. He always give me the strength to complete this thesis. Without his guidance and persistent help this thesis would not have been possible. I really thank to Prof. Jemal who’s giving me the opportunity to work with him. His personal so generous, understanding, wisdom, patience, enthusiasm and encouragement helped make my time at Deakin enjoyable. I would additionally like to thank all the lecturers in School of Information Technology and other departments at Deakin University from whom I learnt so much. Many thanks to School of Information Technology Department staff for their help in the last six years. My appreciation also extends to my other research colleagues of Parallel and Distributed Computing Lab at The Deakin University; in particular Soon Keow Chong, Isredza Rahimi, Farhan, Hairulnizam, Izuan, Harinda, Shivali, Ammar, Davood, Sara, Zulkefli and Maslina for their help throughout the exchange experience. To all my friends at University Technology MARA, Malaysia. Kak Saidatul, Dr. Dang Merduwati, Wan Satirah, Norhayati Hussin, Wan Nor, Norshila, Kak Ti, Kak Linda, Kak Shima, Yana, Mad Khir and all IM245 colleagues, who supported me on v this journey. All of them helped me survive all the stress from this year and would not let me give up. Thank you. I would like to thank my parents, brothers and my nephew, as well as my brother-in-laws and sister-in-law for their affection, love, encouragement, prayers-day and night that enabled me to complete this work. Thanks to University Technology MARA, Malaysia and especially to my Faculty members of Information Management, Puncak Perdana. Prof. Dato. Raja Abdullah, Prof. Adnan, Prof. Laili, Associate Prof. Sazili, Associate Prof. Norasiah and admissions staff of the Faculty of Information Management who all encouraged and supported me. There are many people who played important roles either directly or indirectly in helping me finish my studies. Many thanks and God bless all who taught, prayed for and encouraged me. Not to forget the Ministry of Higher Education, who gave me a scholarship to pursue my PhD. Finally, I am forever indebted to my beloved husband Mohd Nor, for his understanding, endless patience, support and encouragement throughout my doctoral research studies, when it was most required. All my love to him, for finding me the light whenever it was far away. Reduction for every sacrifice that you did for me so far, only Allah could reply. vi Abstract Advances in information and communication technology have changed the way libraries deliver services to their patrons. The horizon of modern libraries has been extended to encompass areas such as e-government services as well as digital outreach beyond the physical library walls. Today, libraries offer their services mostly in digital and electronic form such as digital reference services, e-journals, e-books, online document delivery, web-based service, networked desktop computers and so forth. Almost all these new services are produced and managed externally by digital service providers, while the libraries purchase the right for their customers to access the digital services. These forms of libraries with externally procured digital contents and networked desktop computers are known as digital libraries. In addition to saving physical space and solving the problem of inadequate printed materials in the conventional libraries, digital libraries provide access to digital services in a coherent and economical manner to geographically distributed library patrons. Furthermore, digital libraries have the potential to store much more information than the conventional libraries with little physical space. Measuring quality of services (QoS) is an important component and a major issue for digital libraries. The extension of the library horizon beyond the traditional spheres coupled with the utility-oriented service procurement has introduced a number of challenges. Especially, as the digital libraries with externally procured digital contents become more prevalent, issues regarding how to assess the quality of service level offered by digital libraries have gained critical importance. The conventional library service quality assessment techniques cannot be applied to the digital library with utility-oriented service procurement in which the libraries subscribe vii for a fee to various services from digital service providers in order to service the needs of their patrons with some value-added aspects. No framework that provides a practical approach for the assessment of quality of service level offered by digital libraries exists. This thesis aims to address this gap. The thesis develops a service level agreements (SLAs) based mechanisms for the digital libraries to measure and assess the quality of service they deliver to their customers. The SLAs is a formal contract between the digital content providers and the digital library consumers. The level of customer satisfaction is crucial, thus SLAs are significantly important in digital libraries with utility-oriented service procurement. The proposed approach incorporates library consumer’s service quality expectations into the SLAs with the aim to guarantee that consumer’s service quality expectation can be achieved. The utility and effectiveness of the proposed framework have been evaluated using SmartpPLS and Delphi method. viii Publications Journals 1. Ahmad, M., and Abawajy, J. H. (2014). Digital Library Service Quality Assessment Model. Procedia - Social and Behavioural Sciences, 129, 571–580. 2. Ahmad, M., & Abawajy, J. H. (2014). Service Level Agreements for the Digital Library. Procedia-Social and Behavioural Sciences, 147, 237-243. Conference paper 3. Masitah, A., Abawajy, J., and Kim, T.H (2011). Service Quality Assessement in Provision of Library Services. The 2011 International Conference on u-and e- Service, Science and Technology, Jeju Island, Korea, 8-10 December, 2011. 4. Masitah, A., and Abawajy, J. (2013). Digital Library Service Quality Assessment Model. 2nd International Conference on Innovation, Management and Technology Research (ICIMTR 2013), Port Dickson, Malaysia, 22-23 September, 2013. 5. Masitah, A. And Abawajy, J. (2013). Service Level Agreements for the Digital Library. The 3rd International Conference on Integrated Information (IC-ININFO), Prague, Czech Republic, 5-9 September, 2013. Book Chapter 6. Masitah, A., Abawajy, J., & Kim, T.H. (2011). Service quality assessment in provision of library services. In T.H. Kim et al (ed),U- and E- Service, Science and Technology. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, 83-92. ix Contents Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................... v Abstract ......................................................................................................................... vii Publications .................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures .............................................................................................................. xiii List of Tables ................................................................................................................ xiv List of Acronyms ........................................................................................................... xv Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Motivations and Scope ..................................................................................... 2 1.2. Research Significance ....................................................................................... 4 1.3. Research Problem ............................................................................................. 5 1.4. Research Contributions..................................................................................... 7 1.5. Thesis Organization .......................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2 ......................................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 10 2.2 Understanding the Terminology ..................................................................... 11 2.2.1 Digital Library ............................................................................................ 11 2.2.2 Digital Services........................................................................................... 13 2.2.3 Quality of Services ..................................................................................... 14 2.2.4 Service Quality in Library Services............................................................ 14 2.2.5 Service Level Agreements (SLAs) ............................................................. 15 2.3 Development of Digital Library ..................................................................... 16 2.4 Background and Overview of Digital Library ................................................ 17 2.4.1 National Digital Library System (PERDANA) .......................................... 18 2.4.2 Islamic Digital Library Network (PERDIM) .............................................. 19 2.5 Advantages of Digital Library ........................................................................ 19 2.6 Issues in Digital Library ................................................................................. 21 2.7 Service Quality Evaluation Models and Theories .......................................... 23 2.8 Service Quality in Digital Library .................................................................. 25 2.9 Reviews of Theories and Models in Digital Libraries .................................... 31 2.10 Present Studies on Service Quality in Digital Libraries ................................. 36 2.11 SLAs Background........................................................................................... 38 2.12 SLAs Characteristics ...................................................................................... 39 2.13 Gap in the Literature ....................................................................................... 40 2.14 Chapter Summary ........................................................................................... 42 Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................................... 43 3.1. Paradigm .............................................................................................................. 43 3.2 Method .................................................................................................................. 44 3.2.1 Qualitative Approach .................................................................................. 44 3.2.2 Case Study Research ..................................................................................... 45 3.3 Method In this study ............................................................................................. 47 x