The 1961 Copyright Office study on renewals, authored by Barbara Ringer, has cast an outsized influence on discussions of the U.S. 1923-1963 public domain. As more concrete data emerge from initiatives such as the large-scale determination process in the Copyright Review Management System (CRMS) project, questions are raised about the reliability…

Generating, collecting, and analyzing building usage statistics can greatly increase the ability of an access services unit to meet the changing dynamic of patron needs in an academic library. By analyzing three different data points, the Access Services Unit in Malpass Library at Western Illinois University was able to determine the most…

This study uses three cohorts of first-time, full-time undergraduate students (N = 8,652) at a large, metropolitan, public research university to examine the impact of student use of three library resources (workstations, study rooms, and research clinics) on academic performance. To deal with self-selection bias and estimate this impact more…

Reference librarians are constantly balancing their reference duties against other duties, for example, collection development and departmental liaison. The author works as a reference librarian at Texas A&M University-Commerce Libraries in Commerce, Texas. The university has approximately 11,000 students, a large number of whom are…

Any librarian who has managed electronic resources has experienced the--for want of words--"joy" of gathering and analyzing usage statistics. Such statistics are important for evaluating the effectiveness of resources and for making important budgeting decisions. Unfortunately, the data are usually tedious to collect, inconsistently organized, of…

As federal government information is increasingly migrating to online formats, libraries are providing links to this content via URLs or persistent URLs (PURLs) in their online public access catalogs (OPACs). Clickthrough statistics that accumulated as users visited links to online content in the University of Denver's library OPAC were gathered…

Academic libraries have traditionally collected reference statistics using hash marks on paper. Although efficient and simple, this method is not an effective way to capture the complexity of reference transactions. Several electronic tools are now available to assist libraries with collecting often elusive reference data--among them homegrown…

The University of Mississippi Library created a profile to provide linking from Google Scholar (GS) to library resources in 2005. Although Google Scholar does not provide usage statistics for institutions, use of Google Scholar is clearly evident in looking at library link resolver logs. The purpose of this project is to examine users of Google…

In this explorative study, we first investigate current use of public library statistics in public library management to identify a governing framework and then carefully suggest an alternative framework with income as a goal for sustainability. The meaning of income in terms of management is also discussed. Within this framework, we conduct a…

Objective: Many professions use some form of internship in professional education. Social work has utilized field instruction throughout much of its history. Recently, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) designated field instruction as social work's signature pedagogy. A systematic review was undertaken to examine evidence related to this…

A survey on the use of journals at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center Library was conducted to determine whether the allocation of the largest share of the total library budget to journal subscriptions is justified, and which journals are in low use and could thus be discontinued. The findings, including criteria developed for defining core…

Discusses difficulties involved in locating sources of statistical information on public libraries in Canada and describes a study conducted to identify and evaluate various sources of such information. An 18-item bibliography is provided. (CHC)

A sample of library-output statistics measuring circulation, reference, and in-library use was collected from 76 libraries and tested for redundancy, correlation, and variation using time-series analysis to test the Relative Fidelity of Measurement Model (RFM). The 275 sample statistics correlated in an unpredicted pattern. Twenty-three sources…

On-campus networked personal computer (PC) usage at La Trobe University Library was surveyed during September 2005. The survey's objectives were to confirm peak usage times, to measure some of the relevant parameters of online PC usage, and to determine the effect that 24 new networked PCs had on service quality. The survey found that clients…

Compares directors' use of Public Library Data Service statistics and Federal-State Cooperative System for Public Library Data statistics to show how directors make use of statistics and to highlight the statistical information that directors find particularly useful. The survey addressed: last time of use; ways of use; frequency of use of…