Managing Quality in a National Library

The case of the National Central Library of Florence, Italy

Over the last few years the National Central Library of Florence, Italy (referred to as BNCF) has been developing its Quality Management System (QMS). In December 2001 this system, in compliance with the ISO 9000 series standards, was accredited by the Det Norske Veritas, an independent foundation and a leading international provider for certifying management systems.
The Quality System upgrade involved the Library staff in the implementation of a new release of the Procedures Manual. The whole system, maintained in conformity with the ISO standard by means of recurrent auditing inspections, the most recent in March 2005, aims to manage the organizational process and customer satisfaction through a monitoring and measuring process development plan.
This paper describes the efforts and other issues associated with the development and implementation of a Quality Management System.
The case of the BNCF, the first library accredited for its Quality Management System in Italy, is presented here as a “case study”. The QMS procedures and products include managing interrelated processes as an entire system; measuring customer satisfaction through a survey form and acting on the results; the creation of a Quality Manual, a Procedures Map, and a Services Chart. The analysis of the development of these procedures and results will permit the evaluation of this model for other National libraries.