A Survey Of' the Literature Searching Services Provided by British University Libraries
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A SURVEY OF' THE LITERATURE SEARCHING SERVICES PROVIDED BY BRITISH UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES. by John Matthews A Master's Dissertation, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Master of Arts (or Master of Science) degree of the Loughborough University of Technology. September 198) Supervisor: T. Whitehall, BSc(Lond.), A.F.Inst.Pet., M.I.Inf.Sc. Department of Library and Information Studies @)John Matthews, 198) l ABSTRAC'l" This dissertation attempts to study the current ·awareness and retrospective searching services . presently available in British university libraries. Both manual and computer-based services were included in the survey. The information for the study was gathered via a postal questionnaire which was sent out to all the British university libraries, including the colleges of the universities of· London and Wales. Useful replies were received from forty-seven institutions, making the survey.the most comprehensive detailed study of information services in university libraries since a SCONUL sponsored survey of 1973. The dissertation begins by giving a brief outline, taken from the literature, of the development of academic inform ation services from their inception in 1939 to the present. The second chapter deals with the methodology involved, including how the questionnaire was formulated and the methods used to improve the response rate. The third chapter contains a discussion of the results obtained by the survey, and this, along with the tables of results to which it constantly refers. fo~ the bulk o~ the dissertation. Throughout the third chapter comparisons are made between the resul ts obtained by this survey and the results gathered bl'" the SCONUL survey of 1973. In this wal'" the developments of a decade of academic information provision are·· traced. The dissertation concludes that, unlike other recent studies, there is little evidence in this survey to suggest that manual services are still more popular than computer-based ones. It also suggests that the danger to the future expliotation of computer-based services comes from the temptation to charge clients for the services they use. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those librarians and information officers who provided the information for this survey. The . questionnaire they filled in was very long and I appreciate the trouble that many people took in order to provide me with clear and comprehensive answers. I would especially like to thank Mr. Ralph Adam, of Skinner's Library, the City University and Mr. lI'ob Rhodes of the Pilkington Library, Loughborough University, for their help and suggestions. Finally I must thank Mr. Tom Whitehall, whose guidance and encouragement have· helped me throughout my work. A SURVEY' OF THE LITERATURE SEARCHING SERVICES PROVIDED BY BRITISH UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this survey 1 CHAPTER ONE The development of literature searching .5 services in university libraries: a review from the literature CHAPTER TWO . Methodology 19 CHAPTER THREE Discussion of results 23 . CHAPTER FOUR. Conolusions 50 Tables 52' Appendices 69 References 85 Fibliography 92 -1- INTRODUCTION THE PURPOSE OF TRIS SURvEY:' In December 1973, at the University of Bradford, SCONUL held an exchange of experience seminar on information services in university libraries. To provide that seminar with information on the state of those services, a survey was carried out. The findings of this survey were circulated as a preprint and were subsequently published as an appendix to the seminar proceedings~1) At that time the survey provided " •••• the first report on the state of the art in the relatively new phenomenon of information provision by university 11braries ." (2) S~nce then there have been several similar studies made of the information services in academic libraries, which help, to some extent, to chart the developments which have taken place over the past ten years(3). No other survey, however, has attempted to cover all the university libraries covered in 1973, and therefore no direct comparisons could be made. It is the intention of this survey to compare Hall and Ayres' findings with the current situation, and to attempt to show the major changes that have taken place in the provision of information services in university libraries over a decade. To this end it was intended that a similar questionnaire would be sent out asking for the same information that was provided in the 1973 survey. However, this rather ambitious project has had to be modified. After an initial list of questions was drawn up, covering all aspects of the information -2- servioes that were looked at by SCONUL, it was realised that suoh a list would produoe a questionnaire of massive proportions. As it oould be expeoted that the longer the, questionnaire beoame, the fewer would be the answers to it, and as a good response rate was very important to this survey, the need for data was tempered by the need for a relatively small number of questions. Finally a oompromise was reaohed by limiting this survey to the literature searohing servioes, that is, basioally, the manual and oomputerised forms of retrospeotive searohing and ourrent awareness. The exaot meaning of these and other terms as used in this dissertation will be defined at the end of the introduotion. The other information that Hall and Ayres gathered, (data on referenoe servioes, the publioi ty and promotion of servioes eto.) was left out of this survey. Despite' the omission of questions on these servioes; the questionnaire, when typed up, ran to seven sides of A4 and amounted to some seventy-eight questions (one respondent kindly oounted them for me). Al though the. soope of this survey is, therefore, not quite as broad as that of its predeoessor in 1973, the bulk of the information servioes provided in university libraries are oovered. As a result some direot, and hopefully useful, oomparisons oan be made between the two surveys. This dissertation is not oomprehensive enough to be a seoond."state of the art" report on the provision of information servioes in university libraries, but it oomes as olose as any to providing a olear pioture of the ourrent provision of those servioes oonoerned with literature searohi~g. -)- At this point it may be helpful to provide a few definitions of some of the major terms which will be used in this disser- tation. A great number of varying activities can be included in the broad term "information services", and although information work may sometimes ,run along similar ,lines to the work carried out in a reference library, there are significant differences. A reference service is concerned basically with giving advice on the use of sources such as the library catalogue, bibliographies, indexes and reference books and suggesting likely useful material. An information service is less bibliographical and more factual, that is, it is concerned with the active dissemination of the information itself, rather than a collection of a number of "possible" references. Such a service implies a close relationship between those providing it and those who receive it (often referred to as "clients"). Of the information services considered in this survey, three terms need defining here: the retrospective search, the current awareness service and the selective dissemination of informatio~ (SDI). The retrospective search is quite common in most university' libraries and can be defined as a search for information or documents on a particular subject (or combination of subjects) which is not specifically limited to recent documents. Current awareness (CA) services are defined by Kemp, in his Dook on the subject, as " •••• systems for reviewing newly available documents, selecting items relevant to the needs of an individual or group, and -4- recording them so that notifications may be sent to those individuals or groups to whose needs they are related." (4) SDI is a particular form of current awareness service, where the records of new documents are periodically compared with a statement of a client's (or group of clients') requirements, usually known as a "profile". The client (or group) is then sent notification of those documents whose records match the requirements in the profile. -5- 1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERATURE SEARCHING SERVICES IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A REVIEW FROM THE LITERATURE The services oonsidered in this survey (that is those whioh , require some form of searoh through the literature) are only part of a wider range of services whioh are designed to allow the library user to get,the most out of the resources available. These ,information services include not only ourrent awareness (CA) and retrospective search facilities, but also general and subject enquiry services, the provision of bibliographies, literature guides, and in some cases translations servioes. Most academic libraries now run some sort of user education programme, designed to help libr~ users to carry out their own literature searohes, whioh may either replace or supplement , the information services mentioned above. As we look at the CA and retrospective searoh servioes provided in university libraries we must be aware of their place as part of a larger range of services which are now available. Information services have developed largely as a result of the "information explosion". Neal, pointing out that what is really important is the quality and relevance of material, prefers to use the term "publioations explosion".(5) Alongside ~ this there has been an increase both in the number of readers and in the size and complexity of academic'libraries, resulting .' in problems for teaching staff, who have less time in which to do more complex searohes through an expanding literature. Maurice Line, ,a prolifio writer on the subject of academic information servioes, has written several articles calling for -6- more work to be done in assessing the needs of researchers, and in attempting to satisfy those needs.(6) According to him information services are ultimately a necessity, and the longer we suffer under the weight of the "publications explosion" the more likely we are to turn to some form of information service to ease our problems.