The North Carolina State University Libraries has long recognized the financial burden textbook costs place on students. By crosswalking information on use of our textbook collection with textbook cost and course enrollment data, we have begun to map the environment for textbook use at the university and identified opportunities for faculty…

Librarians often wish to know whether readers in a particular discipline favor e-books or print books. Because print circulation and e-book usage statistics are not directly comparable, it can be hard to determine the relative interest of readers in the two types of books. This study demonstrates a two-step method by which librarians can assess…

The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether there are relationships between first-year college students' use of academic libraries and four academic outcomes: academic engagement, engagement in scholarly activities, academic skills development, and grade point average. The results of regression analyses suggest students' use of books…

When looking for ways to improve library services, we considered what data sources were readily available to us and how we could harvest and use this data. We investigated three years of chat reference statistics at Central Michigan University, a large research institution, to gain a better understanding of our patrons' chat behavior. We then…

The hypothesis that there exists a strong linear relation between reference service and library use was strongly supported by data from Northern Illinois University Library. Hourly counts of people using the reference room, total number of direction and location questions asked, and total number of reference questions asked were randomly sampled.…

Describes a study conducted at Purdue University Library to determine not only the costs of providing online information services to users, but the value of time saved by the end user in having a computer search run and user satisfaction with the results. Six references are listed. (RBF)

Through utilization of effective sampling procedures, libraries may obtain substantial savings in terms of data collection costs. A theoretical statistical sampling model is presented and two types of random sampling techniques are empirically compared as to their effectiveness in estimating a library usage parameter. Implications are drawn for…

Describes a study that investigated factors associated with frequency of use of ERIC CD-ROM in an academic library, including gender, age, level of familiarity with computers, and level of study. The implications of the findings for the allocation of library resources and personnel to meet users' needs are discussed. (11 references) (CLB)

This study examines whether a recommended list of videos and a video display in a community college library cause the circulation of these items to increase, as previous research has shown. During a 10-week pretest period, the circulation of a sample of the videos in the 800s section of the Educational Resources Center at the Columbus State…

An ad hoc committee was formed in the fall of 1988 to survey the perceptions of University of Idaho (UI) faculty concerning their research needs and their attitudes toward library facilities and services. The survey questionnaires were sent to a total of 796 on-campus and off-campus faculty members. The results presented in this report reflect…

Statistical sampling techniques for the measurement of book readership within libraries are described. The procedures, developed and initially implemented at Rider College, rely upon interviews of book readers inside the library rather than upon such indirect usage measures as which volumes are lift on tables for reshelving, or analyses of user…

Tests assumption of Markovity in library circulation data using data obtained from Ohio State University Libraries (1975-78) and Rodda's "An Analysis System for Statistical Analysis of Markov Chains" as test instrument. Implications of Markov properties, constraints of data, and testing are discussed. Explanation of transition frequency…

Evaluates the validity of using circulation data as the index to the total utilization of a library collection and tests the hypothesis that the proposed mixture of Poisson distributions can describe and predict various use distribution. Seven statistical analysis listings, six algorithms, 20 tables, and 43 references are provided. (Author/RBF)

This collection of papers is based on projects done in conjunction with a senior level/graduate course, "Applications of Operations Research Techniques in Systems Engineering." These seven papers describe research studies which utilized user surveys and/or statistical methods to analyze various library operations. The papers are…

Reports on studies conducted to provide an in-depth picture of online catalog use in three aspects of library research: (1) as part of the reference process; (2) as used by unassisted users; (3) as a step in obtaining documents. The research methodology is offered as a model for surveying other library services or products. (14 references) (KRN)