STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE LIBRARY SERVICE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX: PRACTICAL QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY
| Pages | 139-162 |
| Date | 01 February 1996 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026964 |
| Published date | 01 February 1996 |
| Author | N.A. JACOBS |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
THE
Journal of Documentation
VOLUME 52 NUMBER 2 JUNE 1996
STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE LIBRARY SERVICE AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX: PRACTICAL QUANTITATIVE AND
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY
N.
A. JACOBS
n.a.jacobs@sussex.ac.uk
University of Sussex Library, Fainter, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9QL
This paper describes quantitative and qualitative research undertaken
at the University of Sussex Library. The research was concerned to
investigate the behaviour and motivations that led Library users to
give puzzling responses in a user survey into book availability. The
responses concerned the Library's Reserve Collection of key course
texts.
Hence the paper firstly sets out to describe the user survey, and
then goes on to give an account of the qualitative research
methodology employed to look beyond the survey results. This
methodology involved semi-structured interviews with students and
tutors,
which were analysed with the help of the software package
QSR NUD*IST. The research uncovered interesting and useful
information relating to the way Library users approach the Library
service, a summary of which is included in the paper. The research
methodology was found to be a valuable addition to the information
gathering strategies of Library management, revealing patterns of
user attitudes that are difficult if not impossible to access using
traditional survey techniques alone.
LIBRARIANS IN GENERAL, and perhaps academic librarians in particular,
are prone to collecting numbers relating to their library's operations. However,
it is not always apparent that such numbers relate usefully to aspects of the
library service as perceived by the library's users. Perhaps starting with work
on the development of new generation OPACs (online public access catalogues),
for example the Okapi project [1, 2], qualitative research is emerging within
library and information studies as a serious methodological paradigm with
practical benefits for the library manager.
Journal
of
Documentation,
vol. 52, no. 2, June 1996, pp. 139–162
139
JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION
vol.
52, no. 2
This paper seeks to describe the way in which qualitative research was
combined with a quantitative approach at the University of Sussex Library, in
following up a user survey that had revealed some evidence of puzzling user
behaviour. It is thought that this combination of methodologies is a novel
approach to library user research. The paper concentrates on the methodologies
used, since these are the aspects of the work most likely to be of interest to those
working in other, perhaps very different, libraries. Hence the results of the
research are only briefly summarised.
As an introduction to what follows it may be helpful to give a brief description
of the relevant aspects of the University of Sussex Library service. The Library
houses several collections of material, some of which are specifically designed
to support taught students. Principal among these are the Short Loan Collection
and the Reserve Collection. The Short Loan Collection houses some 50,000
items of direct relevance to taught courses at Sussex. These are mostly duplicate
copies of texts that have been found or are anticipated to be in high demand.
They have a non-renewable loan period of four days, and cannot be reserved.
The Reserve Collection houses between
5,000
and 10,000 items at any one time,
and is understood by library management as a 'safety net' facility. Substantial
efforts are made to anticipate likely demands for material, and those texts for
which Short Loan provision alone would be inadequate are brought into
Reserve. In addition the Reserve Collection houses some 2,000 – 3,000 key
photocopied articles with copyright clearance. Two loan periods operate within
the collection, approximating to a day loan and a half-day loan. Only material
in exceptionally high demand and chapter-length texts are placed under the
strictest loan arrangements. Reserve stock is renewable, and can be booked up
to a week in advance. There are punitive fines if Reserve items are returned even
a few minutes late. Although the Reserve Collection is open access (except for
the photocopied articles), unissued books may only be read within the small
reading area adjacent to the bookstacks. However, the lack of a security system
at the boundary between the Reserve area and the rest of the Library means
that this rule is in practice unenforceable and it is regularly broken.
One of the most challenging findings of a recent user survey at the University
of Sussex Library (described by Jacobs and Young [3] and Jacobs [4]) was that
many undergraduate students appeared to regard material with a very short loan
period as being effectively unavailable to them. This finding related particularly
to material in the Library's Reserve Collection. Since this material is generally
placed in Reserve precisely to increase its availability to students (the material
being anticipated to be in high demand), this finding was worrying and warranted
further investigation. A bid was accepted by the University's Teaching and
Learning Development Fund for a one year project to study the reasons why
some students didn't use the Reserve Collection when to do so would have
seemed their only option to access the material they needed. The project
employed a single research assistant and was supported by a steering group
made up of staff from the Library's Systems and Teaching Support (Reserve
Collection) areas. The goals of the project were:
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