No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
An Availability Survey in Co-operation with a School of Librarianship and Information Studies
Abstract
The practical problems in conducting simultaneous surveys across nine site libraries are described. Basic data, results and analyses are provided. An overall availability rate of 75 per cent was discovered. Comparisons are made with a previous survey. A supporting survey of readers' awareness of the survey was also conducted. Improvements are suggested. Benefits and disbenefits for both the teaching department and the library are discussed. The meaning, and limitations, of availability studies are outlined.
The concept of availability (can a library patron locate a desired item on a library's shelves?) and Kantor's branching method for identifying barriers to availability (acquisition, circulation, library operations, and the user) are described. A literature review identifies more than fifty investigations of availability reported in journal articles, dissertations, theses, or conference presentations during the last quarter century. The mean availability rates for known-item searches by actual patrons of 61.3 percent or 63.1 percent (depending on the calculation method) are quite similar to the 61 percent found in an earlier review covering the years 1934 to 1984. Analysis of availability in Kantor's branches shows variation among libraries, but no branch standing out as a major barrier. The paper concludes with the argument that the traditional availability measure can be modified for use as an objective, user-centered evaluative tool in the electronic environment.
Introduces the background to the EQLIPSE (Evaluation and Quality in Library Performance: System for Europe) project and the work done in compiling a core set of performance indicators for evaluating libraries. Describes the collection of inhouse library use data at the University of Central Lancashire Library test site, where EQLIPSE staff gathered data as part of the data collection exercise to test the feasibility of the indicators and to accumulate data in the EQLIPSE system. Some of the difficulties encountered in the process are noted along with the measures taken to address them. In addition to measuring actual use, attempts were also made to establish whether users habitually reshelve items they consult, both when at the shelf and when working at study spaces. Unobtrusive direct observation eventually formed the mainstay of the methods used to measure this. Results suggest that users consulting items at the shelf would change every 10 minutes on average and that the number of users would fall or rise gradually during the two hours between counts. Future developments to the EQLIPSE methodology are discussed.
Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published following peer-review in the Journal of librarianship and information science, published by and copyright Sage Publications Ltd. Introduces the background to the EQLIPSE (Evaluation and Quality in Library Performance: System for Europe) project and the work done in compiling a core set of performance indicators for evaluating libraries. Describes the collection of in house library use data at the University of Central Lancashire Library test site, where EQLIPSE staff gathered data as part of the data collection exercise to test the feasibility of the indicators and to accumulate data in the EQLIPSE system. Some of the difficulties encountered in the process are noted along with the measures taken to address them. In addition to measuring actual use, attempts were also made to establish whether users habitually reshelve items they consult, both when at the shelf and when working at study spaces. Unobtrusive direct observation eventually formed the mainstay of the methods used to measure this. Results suggest that users consulting items at the shelf would change every 10 minutes on average and that the number of users would fall or rise gradually during the two hours between counts. Future developments to the EQLIPSE methodology are discussed.
Measures of 'availability' are advocated as performance indicators for libraries within higher education and for purposes of interlibrary comparison. Previous work on such measures is discussed. The method adopted by Liverpool Polytechnic Library Service in studying the availability of stock is described. Results are given and discussed. A high level of availability was discovered. Figures produced provide a convenient way to summarize a great many data concerning a library's success at acquisition, failure through items being in circulation or in library processing, and the relative success of users in searching for known items.
A recently proposed technique for determining the availability of items in a circulating collection is expanded and applied. We present a discussion of the theoretical justification and a careful analysis of the sources of error and the reliability of the results. We report the results of a new longitudinal study using this technique and apply it retrospectively to a number of previous studies to which it is applicable. The resulting data indicate certain striking regularities in the performance of large university libraries, as well as significant differences.
The implications of this tool, both for management and for the scientific analysis of various aspects of library performance, are discussed.