STUDENT ATTITUDES TO THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY: A SURVEY AT SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY
| Published date | 01 March 1963 |
| Pages | 100-117 |
| Date | 01 March 1963 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026329 |
| Author | MAURICE B. LINE |
STUDENT ATTITUDES TO THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY:
A SURVEY AT SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY
MAURICE B. LINE
Sub-Librarian,
Southampton University Library
'The student must be confident that the library staff is both competent
and willing to help
him,
and must be able to seek
this
help with
a
com-
plete absence of self-consciousness or diffidence. There is a general
impression that students use libraries far
less
than they ought to. If this
impression
is
indeed based on facts we need to know far more about the
nature and
causes
of the present situation before we can hope to remedy
it.'
L. Jolley. The function of the university library.
Journal
of Docu-
mentation,
vol.
18,
no. 3, September 1962, p. 140.
INTRODUCTION
A GOOD DEAL
is
now known about the
use
made by students of univer-
sity libraries, notably from the surveys carried out by Leeds University
Library in 19571 and 1960.2 Statistics of
use,
however, will not by them-
selves indicate how good
a
library
is,
whether
as a
bookstock,
a
building, or
an administrative department. How adequate is the bookstock? How fully
is it being exploited? How important are physical and personal elements?
These are questions librarians are continually asking themselves, but they
are also questions readers could be asked directly or indirectly.
A library's efficiency depends
as
much on
the
relevance of
its
methods and
records
as
on their accuracy, but for obvious reasons it
is
much easier to test
accuracy than relevance. University librarians have a fair idea of what the
teaching staff think of the library, both from personal conversation and
from the public statements of individuals.3 It
is
much harder to know what
students think, but without this information we are in danger of trying to
communicate (since librarianship is a means of communication) to an un-
known audience.
Can students find their way about the library easily? Are the catalogues
a
stumbling-block
as
well
as
an
aid?
Do students have much idea of what sort
100
September 1963 STUDENT ATTITUDES
of help the library staff can give them, and are they ready to make use of it?
Is there a sort of psychological barrier between students and the library?
How well, in short, is the library putting itself across? To answer questions
like this was the main purpose of
a
survey carried out by Southampton
University Library in May 1962. Some similar questions had been put to
students at the London School of Economics in 1960, in a survey on the
Reading habits
of students,4 but the results of this survey had not been pub-
lished when our survey was carried out. Partly to see if any correlation ex-
isted, between use and attitudes, partly to gain information for domestic
purposes, Southampton's survey included
a
number of questions which did
not directly relate to attitudes. The survey therefore covers some of the
same ground as the 1960 surveys at Leeds and the London School of
Eco-
nomics (referred to hereafter as 'the Leeds survey' and 'the LSE survey').
The date of May 1962 was selected for the survey because some new
methods and systems were about to be adopted, and some existing ones
modified;
in
particular, seminars in library use were being proposed. It was
thought moreover that the success of these measures could be gauged if a
similar survey were carried out in three years' time, when there would be a
totally different body of students who knew the Library only after the
changes had been made.
Before the findings of the survey are given, a few facts about Southamp-
ton University Library may be useful (several others are mentioned later at
appropriate places). The Library contained about 160,000 volumes. One
hundred thousand of these were on open shelves in the Main
Library,
forty
thousand in closed collections, and the remaining twenty thousand in De-
partmental
Libraries.
At the time of the survey, the libraries in the Depart-
ments of Chemistry, Engineering, Geography, Geology, Physics, Physi-
ology and Biochemistry, and Zoology housed the main collections in these
subjects; there were also working collections in the Departments of Botany
and Computation, and a small reference collection (consisting mainly of
duplicates) in the Law Faculty. The Ford Collection of Parliamentary
Papers (which
has
non-parliamentary papers also) in the Economics Faculty
is not part of the University Library at all, but was clearly thought of as a
departmental library by the students. The Main Library consists of two
buildings, physically linked by the Catalogue Hall. The Edward Turner
Sims Building was opened in 1935, and has recently been redecorated and
refurnished; it contains on one floor the collections in science and engineer-
ing, and also in music and the fine arts. All other subjects are on two floors
in the Gurney-Dixon Building, opened in 1959. In the Sims Building the
books (which line the walls) surround the readers, while in the Gurney-
Dixon Building the reading places are arranged around the bookstacks.
There are seats in the Main Library for 420 readers. Accessions for the ses-
sion 1961-2 numbered
8,800
books, and 1,300 periodicals are taken cur-
rently. The Library of Congress classification is used.
101
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