Ewa Głowacka - Trends and purposes of studies on use of university libraries in the World 1987-2000


Presented material is an attempt at composing data concerning literature on carried out in the world studies on ways of making use of collections and university libraries services, and a goal of the analysis is to define basic trends of those studies as well as to present information on applicatory utilization of their results. A basic for collecting materials was analytical bibliography Library and Informational Science Abstracts.

Studies on using university libraries were carried out in five continents in ca. 40 countries. A great majority of them has taken place in the United States (94 items), which makes up over 41% of the total. In separate continents the running made Great Britain, Japan, Nigeria, and Australia. In 57 cases studies included all groups of library customers (25% of cases), 101 studies included students (44%), 45 scientific projects were carried out in among research and didactics workers (22%), and other users were taken into consideration in 25 studies (11%). Among applied in the studies techniques of material collection definitely predominated questionnaire (93 cases - ca. 41%), next was observation (63 cases - ca. 28%), next in turn: interview (43 projects - 19%), library statistics (22 - 10%), and mixed techniques (interview, observation and questionnaire) - 6 cases. In one study, the participants were asked to write down reports on searching process in electronic databases.

Research subjects were diverse. Often fields of analyses conducted by particular libraries were vast and included simultaneously many very detailed matters. One of such fields was relationship between users and library collections. Studies in this field regarded first of all utilization of library collections, degree of suitability of provided resources in meeting the needs, and their accessibility in the library. Relatively rarely studies and published was information on degree of utilization of basic sorts of library materials. More frequently investigations concerned utilization of selected kind of collection - most common was analysis of frequency of lending particular periodicals. Another undertaken problem related to collections evaluations was also opinion poll among users on adequacy of particular university library collection in relation to their requirements as well as evaluation of present in particular library policy of collecting and selection of records.

Another vast research problem, relatively frequently undertaken was identifying motivations to use specific library offer as well as favourite users' other channels of information gaining. Considerable set of research problems formed studies on practices and behavior of customers in the library services, investigations on evaluation of service quality and information services of libraries from users' point of view, level of uncertainty and anxiety among users, coming from unawareness of principles of library functioning, and studies one role of nonverbal communication in libraries activity.

Comparing problems of investigations on university libraries users in chronological prospects, one can notice several tendencies. First one is escalating with time research guidance on relationship between the user and automated system, which is being a result of, becoming more common, use of information technologies and considerable growth of digital information resources. Another tendency is growing interest in subjective opinions of users, paying attention to services quality, in particular quality of librarians' work, and application of e.g. marketing research method SERVQUAL. Third distinct tendency, particularly apparent when comparing periods 1945-1989 and 1987-2000, is growth of number of investigations regarding motivations to searching for information and items of university libraries in other information institutions.