Browsing by Subject "Library Use"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Faculty Information Assignments: A Longitudinal Examination of Variations in Survey Results
    (Elsevier, 2006) Applegate, Rachel
    A one-time survey may give a falsely precise indication of local usage. Examining four iterations of a library assignment survey reveals large within-discipline variation; even individual faculty members are inconsistent in their use of library assignments from year to year. Additional causes of variation include changing faculty and pedagogy. This article examines data from a survey sent to faculty about library assignments in their courses in 1996-1997, 2001-2002, and 2003-2004 at a small private masters-level college, and in 2004-2005 at a large public doctoral-intensive university. The researcher expected to discover how coursework in different disciplines required different levels of independent information seeking ("library usage"). The survey method was chosen when the contents and formats of course syllabi proved too inconsistent to yield the needed information about usage of library assignments. Use of library assignments was expected to be relatively consistent from year to year, and from institution to institution, because of the assumption that discipline strongly affects use of library information sources. Each time, the survey achieved a good response rate and gave apparently valuable information about current library assignments. However, the expected disciplinary consistency was much less than anticipated. The variation from year to year within disciplines -- an average of sixteen percentage points -- was almost as great as the variation between disciplines in any one year--an average of 18 to 29 percent. This article describes the intent, scope, focus, and initial findings of the original surveys, then uses the data from the four together to explore potential causes of the year to year variation. The results of this secondary analysis suggest that faculty use of information-seeking assignments is much more volatile than any onetime survey might show.
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    A Neighborhood Analysis of Public Library Use in New York City
    (Copyright 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. [BREAK] Original published article: [LINK]http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/502786[/LINK]. Access to the original article may require subscription and authorized logon ID/password. IUPUI faculty/staff/students please check University Library resources before purchasing an article. Questions on finding the original article via our databases? Ask a librarian: [LINK] http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/research/askalibrarian[/LINK]., 2005) Copeland, Andrea J.; Gong, Hongmian
    The use of 200 public libraries in New York City was analyzed according to their neighborhood characteristics. In addition to demographic, economic, and cultural factors traditionally considered, the social and spatial interactions within a neighborhood were related to public library use. Correlation and regression analyses were implemented for all the libraries. The research found that traditional factors are not enough to explain public library use, especially in a cosmopolitan area such as New York City. Social connections and racial diversity and integration stimulate public library use. Based on these findings, suggestions were made for improving the underutilized library branches in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
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    Why Books Are Bought and Borrowed
    (1988) Lewis, David W.
    The article describes a model which attempts to explain how the cost/value of a users time and the uncertainty of the result effects the decisions users make about whether to use a library or a book store.