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Use of books and journals in a large library for technological research
Znt. Libr.
Rev.
(1977) 9,241-246
Use of Books and Journals in a Large Library for Technological Research M. NOVAK*
There are few great scientific and technology research libraries in the world, which do not complain about difficulties in financing acquisitions. Nevertheless : books are being purchased which no one reads, and investigations about book use frequency that would minimize useless acquisitions are missing. This is a failure on the part of librarians; simply speaking, we are not pragmatic enough, and we apply, for instance, methods for the selection of literature in such fields as technology and exact sciences, which might perhaps be appropriate only in the field of humanities. Although there has been a beginning of a change in recent years,1 we have not had enough courage to put new procedures into practice. The pattern of use of libraries and literature has changed; libraries exist from which very few books are or will be requested. To this type belong, above all, libraries which serve technological research and the technological sciences. Several years ago, we investigated in our library” the pattern of use of technological and scientific literature in “difficult” languages [East European and Slavonic languages (above all Russian) and some East Asian languages, (above all Japanese and Chinese)]. The lack of interest of our users in some types of this literature was most striking. The information we obtained through this investigation was surprising: nearly 97% of the requests were loans of journals, and nearly 75% of them concerned works which had appeared in the last four years. As a consequence, we have acquired no monographs in the Eastern languages since that time (with the following exceptions: dictionaries, handbooks, bibliographies, collections of articles, atlases and similar books), and open access shelving for our journals has been limited to the last four * Universit%sbibliothek TIB, D 3000, Hannover, German Federal Republic. 1 H. H. Fussier and J. L. Simon (1969). Patterns in the Use of Books in Large Research Libraries. Chicago. 2 M. Novak (1972). Zur Benutzung der ostsprachigen technischen Literatur. Z. f. Bibliothekswesen u. Bibliographie 19, 17.
242
M. NOVAK
years. As a consequence, finances have become available for acquisitions, which we could not have obtained otherwise. The most frequent criticism of this survey was that only literature in little known languages was investigated. This literature is, as a consequence, not typical. Therefore, we wanted to find out if the same criteria could be used for the literature in Western languages. First, a brief explanation about our situation. Our library consists on the one hand, of a University Library with a long tradition and accent on technology and pure science and on the other hand, of a Technological Information Library founded 17 years ago (1959). This latter library is the central library for technology and i&s basic sciences (primarily mathematics, physics and chemistry) for the Federal Republic of Germany. Both libraries are located in the same building and are practically, except for the budgets, united. For the purposes of this discussion they can be considered as one library. Together, this library has more than 800000 volumes (microfilms, dissertations, etc. are excepted) and something more than 15000 current journals. The library offers a direct lending service, in the same manner as the British Library’s Lending Division. It can be used by anyone without using the usual inter-library loan service of the German libraries, but there is a fee to be paid for this direct service. This service has been systematically used by industry. By so doing, industry can reduce the costs of its own libraries, and at the same time, have rapid access to much more literature than it could ever have in the libraries of its own. The ratio between local use (nearly all of which is by staff and students of the University of Hannover) and the outside loans is nearly 1: 1. The development of the use during the past ten years is presented in Table 1. TABLE
Use
Local use Outside loans Total
of literature
I
(Numbers in thousands)
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
144 69 213
165 87 252
195 104 299
194 133 327
169 162 331
179 177 356
201 200 401
225 231 456
259 248 507
279 256 535
But what are these loans ? What do our readers really request from us ? Every librarian can cite several dozen book and journal titles, which have been used repeatedly. But we know nothing about books which no one wants to read. When someone asks about criteria for book selection, we say “the healthy instinct of the librarians”; but it is only when we have obtained exact information about library and literature use, that we can obtain a true picture of our collections. There is a
BOOKS
AND
JOURNALS
FOR
TECHNOLOGICAL
243
RESEARCH
marked disparity between the huge files of books purchased and those among them which are really used. It would be natural to consider the remarkable results of the investigation of use of literature in the Eastern languages mentioned at the beginning’ as something extraordinary because this sort of literature is somewhat extraordinary: it will be used nearly exclusively for research, and, because of the language barriers it remains unusable for broad user classes. Is the situation with literature in Western languages really different? A part of this literature in library collections will be more popular. We tried to analyse the patterns in the use of the literature in technology and exact sciences, as far as published in Western and Eastern languages by checking requests from outside for one week at the end of 1973.2 From 11.12. to 15.12. and on 17.12.1973 we sampled 4149 order coupons from outside (i.e. no local use) and divided them according to the publication date of the literature requested. These 4149 orders consisted of 867 order coupons for German inter-library loans and of 3265 order coupons for direct loan use; this is a usual proportion in our loan requests. Also, we may judge the number of 4149 requests as representative enough. Included were the requests for the literature in Eastern languages and the cover-to-cover translations journals : but because they constitute only about 20% of the outside loan orders, they could not influence the statistics substantially. The analysis of the requests is presented in Table II and Fig. 1. II Analysis of requests receivedfrom outside during six working days according to date of publication TABLE
Direct loans Inter-library loans Total %
1973
1972
1971
1970
1969
1968
1967
1966
1965
1964
1162
671
240
158
135
128
73
47
43
49
155 1317 31~7
143 814 19.6
89 329 7.9
75 233 5.6
68 203 4.9
38 166 4
27 100 2.4
36 83 2
24 67 1.6
23 72 1.7
1963
1962
1961
1956-60
1951-55
74
44
46
143
103
78
71
21 95 2.2
21 65 1.6
17 63 1.5
60 203 4.9
31 134 3.2
16 i-i
21 92 2.2
DirectLoans Inter-library loans Total % 1 M. Novak.
1941-50 before 1941 witboutdate 17 17 0.4
Op. cit.
a The following data have been made available to me from a manuscript of my colleague, Mr J. Tehnzen.
244
M.
NOVAK
I.7 I 1973
'72
'71
'70
'69
'68
'67
'66
'65
'64
2.2 I '63
'62
l.6. I '61
l-5 1
Year of publkotion date:
FIG. 1. Analysis of the requests December 1973.
from
outside
according
to date
of publication.
Checking
This analysis corresponds on the whole to the distribution of the requests for the “Eastern languages literature”, as analysed 1969-70 and published in 19721; but there are several striking differences. (Fig. 2).
Year of publication FIG. 2. Analysis of the requests for the “Eastern publication. Checking date December 1969-January July 1969 (---).
languages” 1970
literature ( -);
according to date of checking date June-
The peak use for all types of literature (Western and Eastern languages together) occurs before the end of the first year after publication (books and articles from journals), but peak use of the “Eastern lies very nearly between the first and second year languages literature” 1 M. Novak.
Op. cit.
BOOKS
AND
JOURNALS
FOR
TECHNOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
245
after publication. The literature in the Eastern languages becomes little used more quickly (57% of requests for the “Eastern languages literature” occurred during the first two years after publication; for the “East” and “West” literature combined it was 51.3%; after four years, this percentage was 73% and 65% respectively). The “older” literature (in technology and exact sciences: older than 4-5 years) has, from the standpoint of use frequency, no substantial importance. The evaluation of the 4149 requests obtained within six working days unfortunately says nothing about the proportion of “books” and “journals”. When we librarians have no exact information, we rely upon our “experience”. According to “experience”, the proportion of loan requests for journals in technology can be estimated to be at least 80% ; in fact, this proportion will be greater, because orders for journals (all subjects) for direct loan use amount to 76x.1 Furthermore, local use, exluding use of the textbook collections, will not differ substa+ally. The following data support this assumption (these data have been made available to me through my colleague, Mr P. Hagemeister). A statistical evaluation of requests for literature in the underground stocks (these statistics were ‘made in March 1976; in an underground store, we keep the older and/or less frequently used literature) revealed the following: of 3869 order coupons with identified literature categories, 3604 coupons concerned “journals” (93-l%), only 265 coupons (6.8%) concerned “books” (including dissertations, etc.).2 What are the consequences of these facts? In every state of some scale there is a great National Library, collecting the literature of the land in question without regard to its use, and there is no problem of getting in touch with most foreign libraries with loan functions all over the world today. So borrowing any books with limited usage is preferable to buying. Therefore, the following can be recommended for research libraries with the subjects “Technology” and “Pure sciences” : (1)
In these libraries, the acquisition of journals (serials) should have priority, because at least 90% of requests (except textbooks loans) concern this form of literature. (2) Of the journals, about 70% of the loans are of those published during the last four or five years. (3) The peak use of most journals is the first year after publication; the peak use ofjournals in difficult languages occurs very nearly one year after publication. (4) The language barrier plays no substantial role in the use of the technological
1 G. Schlitt (1976). Direktbestellungen und Leihverkehr. ~eitxhnift Jtir Bibliothekswesen und Bibliogmjhie 23,9. s The details of further research, on which the recommendations to librarians are partly based, for reasons of space have not been included here.
‘246
M.
NOVAK
or scientifically relevant publications, particularly journals. The most important journals in difficult languages should be available in specialized libraries; eventually, translations services should be offered to the interested readers. (5) As a rule, typical author monographs (particularly those in foreign languages) need not to be acquired in such subjects as technology and exact sciences: their use is generally much too limited. They should be purchased only if they are requested. For most libraries, occasional borrowing of special foreign author monographs from foreign national or specialized libraries might be cheaper than the efforts, to have as many books as possible in the library. (6) Acquisition of literature older than ten years is of importance only for the history of technology and sciences.
These recommendations cannot surely be applied generally and everywhere: there are no two equal libraries in the world. But if this article stimulates discussion about the necessity and usefulness of acquisitbns, and if it results in more surveys of the use of monographs, it will have reached its goal.
Rev.
(1977) 9,241-246
Use of Books and Journals in a Large Library for Technological Research M. NOVAK*
There are few great scientific and technology research libraries in the world, which do not complain about difficulties in financing acquisitions. Nevertheless : books are being purchased which no one reads, and investigations about book use frequency that would minimize useless acquisitions are missing. This is a failure on the part of librarians; simply speaking, we are not pragmatic enough, and we apply, for instance, methods for the selection of literature in such fields as technology and exact sciences, which might perhaps be appropriate only in the field of humanities. Although there has been a beginning of a change in recent years,1 we have not had enough courage to put new procedures into practice. The pattern of use of libraries and literature has changed; libraries exist from which very few books are or will be requested. To this type belong, above all, libraries which serve technological research and the technological sciences. Several years ago, we investigated in our library” the pattern of use of technological and scientific literature in “difficult” languages [East European and Slavonic languages (above all Russian) and some East Asian languages, (above all Japanese and Chinese)]. The lack of interest of our users in some types of this literature was most striking. The information we obtained through this investigation was surprising: nearly 97% of the requests were loans of journals, and nearly 75% of them concerned works which had appeared in the last four years. As a consequence, we have acquired no monographs in the Eastern languages since that time (with the following exceptions: dictionaries, handbooks, bibliographies, collections of articles, atlases and similar books), and open access shelving for our journals has been limited to the last four * Universit%sbibliothek TIB, D 3000, Hannover, German Federal Republic. 1 H. H. Fussier and J. L. Simon (1969). Patterns in the Use of Books in Large Research Libraries. Chicago. 2 M. Novak (1972). Zur Benutzung der ostsprachigen technischen Literatur. Z. f. Bibliothekswesen u. Bibliographie 19, 17.
242
M. NOVAK
years. As a consequence, finances have become available for acquisitions, which we could not have obtained otherwise. The most frequent criticism of this survey was that only literature in little known languages was investigated. This literature is, as a consequence, not typical. Therefore, we wanted to find out if the same criteria could be used for the literature in Western languages. First, a brief explanation about our situation. Our library consists on the one hand, of a University Library with a long tradition and accent on technology and pure science and on the other hand, of a Technological Information Library founded 17 years ago (1959). This latter library is the central library for technology and i&s basic sciences (primarily mathematics, physics and chemistry) for the Federal Republic of Germany. Both libraries are located in the same building and are practically, except for the budgets, united. For the purposes of this discussion they can be considered as one library. Together, this library has more than 800000 volumes (microfilms, dissertations, etc. are excepted) and something more than 15000 current journals. The library offers a direct lending service, in the same manner as the British Library’s Lending Division. It can be used by anyone without using the usual inter-library loan service of the German libraries, but there is a fee to be paid for this direct service. This service has been systematically used by industry. By so doing, industry can reduce the costs of its own libraries, and at the same time, have rapid access to much more literature than it could ever have in the libraries of its own. The ratio between local use (nearly all of which is by staff and students of the University of Hannover) and the outside loans is nearly 1: 1. The development of the use during the past ten years is presented in Table 1. TABLE
Use
Local use Outside loans Total
of literature
I
(Numbers in thousands)
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
144 69 213
165 87 252
195 104 299
194 133 327
169 162 331
179 177 356
201 200 401
225 231 456
259 248 507
279 256 535
But what are these loans ? What do our readers really request from us ? Every librarian can cite several dozen book and journal titles, which have been used repeatedly. But we know nothing about books which no one wants to read. When someone asks about criteria for book selection, we say “the healthy instinct of the librarians”; but it is only when we have obtained exact information about library and literature use, that we can obtain a true picture of our collections. There is a
BOOKS
AND
JOURNALS
FOR
TECHNOLOGICAL
243
RESEARCH
marked disparity between the huge files of books purchased and those among them which are really used. It would be natural to consider the remarkable results of the investigation of use of literature in the Eastern languages mentioned at the beginning’ as something extraordinary because this sort of literature is somewhat extraordinary: it will be used nearly exclusively for research, and, because of the language barriers it remains unusable for broad user classes. Is the situation with literature in Western languages really different? A part of this literature in library collections will be more popular. We tried to analyse the patterns in the use of the literature in technology and exact sciences, as far as published in Western and Eastern languages by checking requests from outside for one week at the end of 1973.2 From 11.12. to 15.12. and on 17.12.1973 we sampled 4149 order coupons from outside (i.e. no local use) and divided them according to the publication date of the literature requested. These 4149 orders consisted of 867 order coupons for German inter-library loans and of 3265 order coupons for direct loan use; this is a usual proportion in our loan requests. Also, we may judge the number of 4149 requests as representative enough. Included were the requests for the literature in Eastern languages and the cover-to-cover translations journals : but because they constitute only about 20% of the outside loan orders, they could not influence the statistics substantially. The analysis of the requests is presented in Table II and Fig. 1. II Analysis of requests receivedfrom outside during six working days according to date of publication TABLE
Direct loans Inter-library loans Total %
1973
1972
1971
1970
1969
1968
1967
1966
1965
1964
1162
671
240
158
135
128
73
47
43
49
155 1317 31~7
143 814 19.6
89 329 7.9
75 233 5.6
68 203 4.9
38 166 4
27 100 2.4
36 83 2
24 67 1.6
23 72 1.7
1963
1962
1961
1956-60
1951-55
74
44
46
143
103
78
71
21 95 2.2
21 65 1.6
17 63 1.5
60 203 4.9
31 134 3.2
16 i-i
21 92 2.2
DirectLoans Inter-library loans Total % 1 M. Novak.
1941-50 before 1941 witboutdate 17 17 0.4
Op. cit.
a The following data have been made available to me from a manuscript of my colleague, Mr J. Tehnzen.
244
M.
NOVAK
I.7 I 1973
'72
'71
'70
'69
'68
'67
'66
'65
'64
2.2 I '63
'62
l.6. I '61
l-5 1
Year of publkotion date:
FIG. 1. Analysis of the requests December 1973.
from
outside
according
to date
of publication.
Checking
This analysis corresponds on the whole to the distribution of the requests for the “Eastern languages literature”, as analysed 1969-70 and published in 19721; but there are several striking differences. (Fig. 2).
Year of publication FIG. 2. Analysis of the requests for the “Eastern publication. Checking date December 1969-January July 1969 (---).
languages” 1970
literature ( -);
according to date of checking date June-
The peak use for all types of literature (Western and Eastern languages together) occurs before the end of the first year after publication (books and articles from journals), but peak use of the “Eastern lies very nearly between the first and second year languages literature” 1 M. Novak.
Op. cit.
BOOKS
AND
JOURNALS
FOR
TECHNOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
245
after publication. The literature in the Eastern languages becomes little used more quickly (57% of requests for the “Eastern languages literature” occurred during the first two years after publication; for the “East” and “West” literature combined it was 51.3%; after four years, this percentage was 73% and 65% respectively). The “older” literature (in technology and exact sciences: older than 4-5 years) has, from the standpoint of use frequency, no substantial importance. The evaluation of the 4149 requests obtained within six working days unfortunately says nothing about the proportion of “books” and “journals”. When we librarians have no exact information, we rely upon our “experience”. According to “experience”, the proportion of loan requests for journals in technology can be estimated to be at least 80% ; in fact, this proportion will be greater, because orders for journals (all subjects) for direct loan use amount to 76x.1 Furthermore, local use, exluding use of the textbook collections, will not differ substa+ally. The following data support this assumption (these data have been made available to me through my colleague, Mr P. Hagemeister). A statistical evaluation of requests for literature in the underground stocks (these statistics were ‘made in March 1976; in an underground store, we keep the older and/or less frequently used literature) revealed the following: of 3869 order coupons with identified literature categories, 3604 coupons concerned “journals” (93-l%), only 265 coupons (6.8%) concerned “books” (including dissertations, etc.).2 What are the consequences of these facts? In every state of some scale there is a great National Library, collecting the literature of the land in question without regard to its use, and there is no problem of getting in touch with most foreign libraries with loan functions all over the world today. So borrowing any books with limited usage is preferable to buying. Therefore, the following can be recommended for research libraries with the subjects “Technology” and “Pure sciences” : (1)
In these libraries, the acquisition of journals (serials) should have priority, because at least 90% of requests (except textbooks loans) concern this form of literature. (2) Of the journals, about 70% of the loans are of those published during the last four or five years. (3) The peak use of most journals is the first year after publication; the peak use ofjournals in difficult languages occurs very nearly one year after publication. (4) The language barrier plays no substantial role in the use of the technological
1 G. Schlitt (1976). Direktbestellungen und Leihverkehr. ~eitxhnift Jtir Bibliothekswesen und Bibliogmjhie 23,9. s The details of further research, on which the recommendations to librarians are partly based, for reasons of space have not been included here.
‘246
M.
NOVAK
or scientifically relevant publications, particularly journals. The most important journals in difficult languages should be available in specialized libraries; eventually, translations services should be offered to the interested readers. (5) As a rule, typical author monographs (particularly those in foreign languages) need not to be acquired in such subjects as technology and exact sciences: their use is generally much too limited. They should be purchased only if they are requested. For most libraries, occasional borrowing of special foreign author monographs from foreign national or specialized libraries might be cheaper than the efforts, to have as many books as possible in the library. (6) Acquisition of literature older than ten years is of importance only for the history of technology and sciences.
These recommendations cannot surely be applied generally and everywhere: there are no two equal libraries in the world. But if this article stimulates discussion about the necessity and usefulness of acquisitbns, and if it results in more surveys of the use of monographs, it will have reached its goal.