Search

In order to assess the competence of library users at Bergen Community College (Paramus, New Jersey), a survey of the student body was conducted which revealed that more than half of the students used the library as a resource center and that approximately 64 percent of students had been exposed to a library orientation program in their English classes. Despite this finding, librarians continued to observe that students were deficient in research skills. It was recommended that an innovative course in library orientation and research skills be developed and experimentally administered. (EMH)

This text focuses on decisions which affect library stock control or the acquisition and management of library materials. The book covers five areas: (1) a definition of the problem; (2) optimal size of library stock; (3) diagnosis of faulty control of book availability; (4) improvement of book availability; and (5) synthesis of theories and discoveries outlined earlier. The main thrust is to relate library functions such as acquisition, duplicating, binding, circulation, and discarding to the needs and behaviors of library users. Since a large amount of the demand for books tends to be concentrated on a small proportion of the library's stock, this emphasis is revealed in the attention devoted to the problems of managing the titles that are in relatively high demand. (Author/EMH)

A collection of original essays, case studies, and research reports is presented on the problems, hopes, and techniques of instructing library users and nonusers, from the kindergartener to the postschool adult, in the effective use of libraries and their resources. First there is a comprehensive overview of the research to date on library user education. Articles in Part 1 probe the special problems in dealing with children and young adults, undergraduates, and the postschool adult. In Part 2, authors explore the significant and often neglected role of the teacher in educating students to use the library. Various approaches to library-use instruction are presented in Part 3, "Implementation and Evaluation of Library-Use Instruction Programs." Finally, the library school's responsibility in preparing librarians who can successfully introduce the library to potential users is considered. (Author/LS)

The Canadian Interlibrary Loan system (ILL) allows users to tap the total scientific and technical information resources of Canada. This manual details the types of materials available through ILL--books, periodicals, government publications, conference proceedings, patents, theses, standards, and translations--and instructions are given on obtaining loans or copies using the most efficient professionals and of library users. (JY)

An investigation was conducted to probe faculty attitudes toward library effectiveness, to measure the effect on these attitudes of the dispersion of relevant resources in a system of departmental libraries around the campus, and to determine if a document delivery system produced changes in user attitudes toward the library. Studies were conducted at Syracuse University (SU) and Ohio State University (OSU), the latter having a new document delivery service. At SU, interviews were conducted with a random sample of faculty members; other techniques, such as subject interest profiling, shelf list location counts and distance measurements, were used to gauge user and library effectiveness. At OSU, known users of the document delivery service were interviewed. The investigators found that, while a department library structure may well have impeded an individual's access to all relevant materials, attitudes of users of branch libraries were generally more positive toward the library as a source of information than attitudes of central library users. The small sample of faculty studied at OSU precluded a generalizable evaluation of the document delivery service, but it was felt that such a service increased user access to and satisfaction with the library. (Author/SL)