Journal Usage (2 messages) Marcia Tuttle 25 Feb 1997 20:01 UTC
----------(1) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:24:16 -0400 From: Tim Lawrence <lawrencet@NKU.EDU> Subject: Re: JOURNAL USAGE (Linden Sweeney) We keep a carbon a of all requests made for microforms, and we put colored dots on bound volumes as they are resheleved. We have a database consisting of all current titles. All the uses of any format of a given title are totaled under that title's enrty in the database. We started this last semester and it seemed to work well. What we are missing of course is numbers on the most recent year of any title. We tried dotting unbounds when reshelving, but patrons are much more likely to browse and reshelve these themselves, and covers of many publications fall off, or don't hold their dots, etc. Tim Lawrence Northern Kentucky University Serials Assistant Steely Library lawrencet@nku.edu At 10:08 AM 2/25/97 -0500, you wrote: >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 14:43:05 UT >From: jonathan sweeney <JONATHANSWEENEY@MSN.COM> >Subject: JOURNAL USAGE > >Hi, I am currently studying for a Masters degree in Librarianship, in the >UK. I am interested to hear from anyone who has come up with a reliable >method of measuring the in-house use of journals in academic libraries. >Even if your methods are not that reliable I would still like to hear >about the various methods that are used in the US and the flaws there may >be or may not be in your methods. > >Thanks Linden Sweeney , Liverpool John Moores University. ----------(2) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:53:33 -0800 (PST) From: Bud Sonka <bsonka@nunic.nu.edu> Subject: Re: Journal Usage (3 messages) Jonathon, What you will learn out in the real world is that there is very little science in library science, unless you are conversant with chaos therory. When it comes to to compiling and analyzing usage statistics, what is important is identifying relative values rather than absolute quantities. You look for trends up and down, periodic peaks, weighed comparisons (obviously a weekly is used more than a quarterly, but that dosn't mean you start cancelling quarterlies). Considerations such as whether or not patrons are sneaking things onto the shelves are givens, like the fact that a given number of staff members walk through our electric door counter everyday: it doesn't matter, only whether the count is going up or down, and by what percentage. At any rate, at our libraries, we just count what we reshelve, or refile in the case of microfiche (which, by the way, we only measure, having determined that there are an average of 160 fiche to a measured inch). Let me know if I can give you any further help in the way of reality checks. Bud Sonka Serials Supervisor National University Library System San Diego