The Gaps and Zone of Tolerance in Service Provision at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Library in Arusha, Tanzania

Abstract

The study sought to investigate the gaps and zone of tolerance in service provision at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights library in Arusha, Tanzania. The target population was 94 library users. The study employed LibQUAL and SERVQUAL protocols to assess the service adequacy gap (SAG), service superiority gap (SSG), zone of tolerance (ZoT) and Desired Mean (D-M) scores. The findings revealed several gaps between the users’ expectations and perceptions of service quality, with library services falling below the users’ expectations. Furthermore, the users’ expectations exceeded their perceptions. The gaps generally showed the library performing well in human aspects but needing to improve in the information-collection and physical aspects. The study recommends that the library should allocate resources to ensure that the human aspects of the library remain at high levels of service quality, but take action to remedy the information-collection and physical aspects of the library.