Kurt Blythe

Access of Digitized Print Originals in U.S. and U.K. Higher Education Libraries Combined with Print Circulation Indicates Increased Usage of Traditional Forms of Reading Materials

A Review of: Joint, Nicholas. “Is Digitisation the New Circulation?: Borrowing Trends, Digitisation and the nature of reading in US and UK Libraries.” Library Review 57.2 (2008): 87-95. Objective – To discern the statistical accuracy of reports that print circulation is in decline in libraries, particularly higher education libraries in the United States (U.S.) and United Kingdom (U.K.), and to determine if circulation patterns reflect a changing dynamic in patron reading habits. Design – Comparative statistical analysis. Setting – Library circulation statistics from as early as 1982 to as recent as 2006, culled from various sources with specific references to statistics gathered by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Library and Information Statistics Unit (LISU), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Subjects – Higher education institutions in the United States and United Kingdom, along with public libraries to a lesser extent. Methods – This study consists of an analysis of print circulation statistics in public and higher education libraries in the U.S. and U.K., combined with data on multimedia circulation in public libraries and instances of digital access in university libraries. Specifically, NEA statistics provided data on print readership levels in the U.S. from 1982 to 2002; LISU statistics were analyzed for circulation figures and gate counts in U.K. public libraries; ARL statistics from 1996 to 2006 provided circulation data for large North American research libraries; NCES statistics from 1990 to 2004 contributed data on circulation in “tertiary level” U.S. higher education libraries; and ACRL statistics were analyzed for more circulation numbers for U.S. post-secondary education libraries. The study further includes data on U.K. trends in print readership and circulation in U.K. higher education libraries, and trends in U.S. public library circulation of non-print materials. Main Results – Analysis of the data indicates that print circulation is down in U.S. and U.K. public libraries and in ARL-member libraries, while it is up in the non-ARL higher education libraries represented and in UK higher education libraries. However, audio book circulation in U.S. public libraries supplements print circulation to the point where overall circulation of book materials is increasing, and the access of digital literature supplements print circulation in ARL-member libraries (although the statistics are difficult to measure and meld with print circulation statistics). Essentially, the circulation of book material is increasing in most institutions when all formats are considered. According to the author, library patrons are reading more than ever; the materials patrons are accessing are traditional in content regardless of the means by which the materials are accessed. Conclusion – The author contends that print circulation is in decline only where digitization efforts are extensive, such as in ARL-member libraries; when digital content is factored into the equation the access of book-type materials is up in most libraries. The author speculates that whether library patrons use print or digital materials, the content of those materials is largely traditional in nature, thereby resulting in the act of “literary” reading remaining a focal point of library usage. Modes of reading and learning have not changed, at least insofar as these things may be inferred from studying circulation statistics. The author asserts that digital access is favourable to patrons and that libraries should attempt to follow the ARL model of engaging in large-scale digitization projects in order to provide better service to their patrons; the author goes on to argue that U.K. institutions with comparable funding to ARLs will have greater success in this endeavour if U.K. copyright laws are relaxed.

A Faceted Catalogue Aids Doctoral-Level Searchers

A Review of: Olson, Tod A. “Utility of a Faceted Catalog for Scholarly Research” Library Hi Tech 25.4 (2007): 550-61. Objective – To learn whether a faceted catalogue and word cloud aids in the discovery process. Design – User study. Setting – Large academic research library in the United States. Subjects – Twelve PhD candidates in the humanities, the majority of whom are engaged with researching, proposing, or writing their dissertations. Methods – The library’s entire catalogue of 5.2 million records was loaded into the AquaBrowser OPAC search interface. A pilot study was conducted using three humanities graduate students employed by the library. Following the pilot, the main study was conducted using graduate students in the humanities. Graduate students in the social sciences were desired for the study, but were not able to be contacted due to time constraints. Once selected, the test subjects were asked to use an interface that offered both facets and tag clouds for enhanced search quality. Test subjects were allowed to choose the topic they would like to research; all chose to research their dissertation topic. A moderator and recorder facilitated research conducted with the faceted catalogue. The moderator ensured that students commented on their findings, cleared up any confusion with using the interface, and kept the students on task. Only when students remarked that a new discovery had been made were those discoveries noted. The impact to the discovery process of faceted navigation and AquaBrowser’s word cloud was studied while the impact of relevance ranking was not. Main Results – The article asserts that results from both the pilot and main study were sufficiently similar to justify combining them for the paper, but the advantage that students employed by the library might have over other students is not discussed. Nine of the twelve students used in the study found new results using the faceted catalogue and word cloud. The responses of the user group to the faceted catalogue and word cloud were “overwhelmingly positive” (555). However, since students were allowed to move freely between the word cloud and faceted navigation tool, it is difficult to attribute new discoveries solely to one or the other. However, when a new discovery could be “attributed primarily to one factor or another” (555) it was noted. The faceted navigation tool aided discovery at least four times and the word cloud aided discovery at least six. Conclusion – A faceted catalogue interface with a word cloud feature clearly aids in the discovery process for more advanced researchers—those with specialized subject knowledge, familiarity with their library’s collection, and experience in researching their area. However, facets and word clouds have limitations: records with limited cataloguing have little to offer faceted navigation; catalogue records from diverse providers introduce controlled vocabularies beyond LCSH and MeSH into search returns, resulting in the same word potentially appearing multiple times in the same return albeit with different meanings; the word cloud may contain certain words that researchers feel to be irrelevant. Despite these issues, the use of word clouds and faceted navigation (and relevance ranking) appears to be beneficial to research conducted by experienced subject searchers in the humanities.

Resource Description and Access: 2014 Update

This article summarizes a presentation given March 14, 2014, at the 23rd Annual North Carolina Serials Conference by Kurt C. Blythe and Christee Pascale. The presenters reviewed the most important developments in RDA from 2013/2014 from a serialist point of view. Additionally, the lessons learned from training for and implementing RDA at North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Libraries were described by Pascale and Blythe respectively.

The Academic Reward System is the Primary Influence Toward Faculty Non-Participation in Institutional Repositories

Objective – To better understand the lack of faculty participation in Cornell University’s DSpace institutional repository (IR), and to learn if this lack of participation is peculiar to Cornell or reflective of a larger trend in faculty non-participation in IRs. Design – Comparative analysis and interviews. Setting – Cornell University’s DSpace IR and sciences, social sciences, and humanities faculties; and DSpace installations at 7 other universities. Subjects – The DSpace IR at Cornell University and at 7 other locations. Eleven sciences, social sciences, and humanities faculty members at Cornell University. Methods – The authors analyzed data over a fifteen-month period from Cornell’s DSpace IR to determine the total deposits, the types of objects deposited, the communities and collections that received deposits, the frequency of deposits, the IP addresses which made deposits, and how often objects in the IR were viewed. These data were compared to equivalent data taken from seven other IRs on all aspects except deposits from IP addresses and how often objects were viewed. Finally, 11 Cornell faculty members from various departments in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities were interviewed over a two-month period to provide context to the comparative analysis. Main results – At the time of the study, the IR at Cornell was organized into 193 communities of collections. These collections numbered 196, with 139 of them holding a combined total of 2646 objects: The other 57 collections were empty. While the IR as a whole showed steady growth, 77% of Cornell’s collections reflected a plateau growth pattern of primarily “one-time deposits,” approximately 18% exhibited a stair-step growth pattern of “periodic batch additions of material,” approximately 3% showed steady growth, and 1.4% were “uncatagorizable.” Five-hundred nineteen unique IP addresses made deposits to Cornell’s IR over the course of the fifteen-month study, but 50% of these deposited only one object, and only 32 IP addresses deposited 10 or more objects. Of the other IRs studied, the lowest number of communities is zero and the highest is 390, the number of collections ranged from 10 to 282, and the number of objects ranged from 500 to 32,676. In most statistical categories, Cornell fell in the midrange. The two repositories with the fewest communities and collections – zero communities and 18 collections in one instance, and 6 and 10 in the other – are the only two with no empty collections. The repository with the most communities and collections also had the most empty collections (58%). The repository with the most objects was the one with zero communities and only 18 collections; and the repository with the fewest objects was the one with only 6 communities and 10 collections. The third largest IR, with 3111 objects, had far and away the highest rate of steady growth (16.7%); while the IR with the most objects had the highest rate of stair-step growth (56.3%), and was the only IR to have a higher percentage of growth in any category other than plateau. Interviews with faculty indicated that they do not make deposits to IRs for a number of reasons. Faculty considered their primary audience to be their peers, so access to their scholarship was largely considered a “non-issue” as it was adequately provided through personal Web pages, subject repositories, or journal literature. Likewise, long-term preservation was not an overarching area of concern. The chief factors for not using an IR, however, all revolved around restrictions brought on by the academic reward system. Questions of copyright and whether depositing objects qualifies as publishing, thereby hindering efforts to publish in journals, were paramount, as were fears that depositing scholarship alongside less rigorous works in a catch-all IR would diminish the work and the reputation of the scholar by association. Hesitancy to make work available before it had been certified and peer-reviewed was also a foremost concern. Conclusion – Although objects in Cornell’s DSpace are accessed both locally for items that are tied into the curriculum, and outside of the university for items that are of national (and international) interest, the repository was not supported well by the faculty. The majority of the collections defined in Cornell’s IR were under populated, and what growth was evident arose primarily from deposits made by non-faculty. The reasons for this were manifold, but centered primarily on the established culture of the academic reward system, which encourages publishing in recognized journals and does little to foster thoughts for long-term preservation or dissemination outside of a given scholar’s peer group. These issues were evident in faculty concerns that depositing materials in an IR might prevent later publication in a journal; the idea that depositing scholarship in a non-vetted repository would diminish that work by association with less scholarly materials; the feeling in some fields that it would be irresponsible to provide access to any unfinished, non-vetted work; the thought that IRs are not sufficient to the task of certifying scholarship; and the concern that deposit in an IR might lead to plagiarism or the loss of initiative on unpublished ideas.