From the Desk of the Interim Chief Librarian

LibQUAL is the name of a customer satisfaction survey for libraries. It measures library users’ perceptions of service quality and identifies gaps between desired, perceived and minimum expectations of service. This survey has been administered by the Association for Research Libraries since 2001. Participating academic and research libraries number more than 200, including U.Mass. (Boston), Texas A&M, McGill, Georgia Tech., Adelphi, Brown, Duke, Stevens Institute, U.Maryland, and several overseas universities.

Very much in keeping with the Outcomes Assessment Planning now underway at John Jay, LibQUAL is meant to be iterative: survey results generate changes and outcomes, these generate new goals, they produce further outcomes, etc. Once entered upon, the LibQUAL survey should be repeated to assess change. Lehman, Baruch, and Hunter Colleges have already been through one cycle of the survey. Additional general information and sample questions are available at http://www.libqual.org

This spring all CUNY libraries are scheduled to participate in the LibQUAL survey. It will be locally administered and paid for by CUNY Central Office of Library Services. The choice of questions, about thirty in all, are partially standard and partially chosen from a standard list. There is opportunity for write-in comments and these will be collected and reported. Notice by email will go out to faculty, staff and students on March 28 followed by the survey on April 4. It should take about ten minutes to answer the questions. The survey will also be available from the Library’s website. Confidentiality is assured Since John Jay students have been slow to adopt John Jay email, the Lloyd Sealy librarians will supplement email with flyers, notices on bulletin boards, notices on the library’s and the college’s website, and by talking to library users. The Library will offer three prize gift certificates at Barnes & Noble and three flash drives for participants chosen at random. Classroom faculty can help by mentioning the survey and the prizes in their classes. If anyone has further ideas on how to generate participation, please let me know. One college had a very respectable 17% participation rate among undergraduates, something to emulate.

LibQUAL survey results present us with a great opportunity, not just for Middle States outcomes assessment, but for all sorts of meta-comparisons among CUNY’s libraries, and for verifiable answers to questions such as: Is there campus awareness of the richness of available databases? Is at-home use working for our community? Do students regard the Library as a welcoming place? Which tools are not working for researchers? Summary results will appear on the Library’s website. The Sealy Library is forming an assessment and action committee to evaluate and act on results of the survey. We invite your participation.

Janice Dunham

Sealy Library Acquires Rare Early Penological Treatise

The Barberini family was one of the most powerful in seventeenth-century Rome, especially after Maffeo Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Urban’s nephews Antonio and Francesco became cardinals under Urban, and their brother Taddeo became Prince of Palestrina and Prefect of Rome. Giovanni Battista Scanaroli was an important adviser to the family and supervised their affairs. Scanaroli was appointed as the titular archbishop of Sidon in Syria, but his primary work was done for the family and the papacy in Rome. Under the auspices of the Camera apostolica, one of the financial and judicial bodies of the papal government, Scanaroli published an important work on the rights of prisoners in Roman jails, prison conditions, use of torture, as well as the rules for the visitation of prisoners. His De visitatione carceratorum libri tres. Quibus omnia ad visitationem, patrocinium, et liberationem carceratorum spectantia explanantur... (Rome, 1655) gives important information on the legal and social issues surrounding a criminal justice system functioning under a confusing array of Roman and medieval legal statutes and customs.

The work presents valuable evidence on the conditions of incarceration that led to the changes in the philosophy and practice of punishment brought about by Cesare Beccaria and others in the next century. The book is illustrated with a full page woodcut of a prisoner suspended in mid-air by a series of ropes that secure his feet to one wall, his chest to the opposite wall, and his bound wrists lifted behind his back by a pulley system. Sealy Library is proud that this volume, one of only six in the United States, is now in its Special Collections Division where it takes a prized place in its historical criminal justice holdings.

Larry E. Sullivan