----------(1)

Date:         Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:24:16 -0400
From: Tim Lawrence <lawrencet@NKU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: JOURNAL USAGE (Linden Sweeney)

We keep a carbon a of all requests made for microforms, and we put colored
dots on bound volumes as they are resheleved. We have a database consisting
of all current titles. All the uses of any format of a given title are
totaled under that title's enrty in the database. We started this last
semester and it seemed to work well. What we are missing of course is
numbers on the most recent year of any title. We tried dotting unbounds when
reshelving, but patrons are much more likely to browse and reshelve these
themselves, and covers of many publications fall off, or don't hold their
dots, etc.

Tim Lawrence                            Northern Kentucky University
Serials Assistant                       Steely Library
lawrencet@nku.edu

At 10:08 AM 2/25/97 -0500, you wrote:
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 14:43:05 UT
>From: jonathan sweeney <JONATHANSWEENEY@MSN.COM>
>Subject: JOURNAL USAGE
>
>Hi, I am currently studying for a Masters degree in Librarianship, in the
>UK. I am interested to hear from anyone who has come up with a reliable
>method of measuring the in-house use of journals in academic libraries.
>Even if your methods are not that reliable I would still like to hear
>about the various methods that are used in the US and the flaws there may
>be or may not be in your methods.
>
>Thanks Linden Sweeney , Liverpool John Moores University.

----------(2)

Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:53:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Bud Sonka <bsonka@nunic.nu.edu>
Subject: Re: Journal Usage (3 messages)

Jonathon,

What you will learn out in the real world is that there is very little
science in library science, unless you are conversant with chaos therory.
When it comes to to compiling and analyzing usage statistics, what is
important is identifying relative values rather than absolute quantities.
You look for trends up and down, periodic peaks, weighed comparisons
(obviously a weekly is used more than a quarterly, but that dosn't mean
you start cancelling quarterlies).  Considerations such as whether or not
patrons are sneaking things onto the shelves are givens, like the fact
that a given number of staff members walk through our electric door
counter everyday:  it doesn't matter, only whether the count is going up
or down, and by what percentage.  At any rate, at our libraries, we just
count what we reshelve, or refile in the case of microfiche (which, by the
way, we only measure, having determined that there are an average of 160
fiche to a measured inch). Let me know if I can give you any further
help in the way of reality checks.

Bud Sonka
Serials Supervisor
National University Library System
San Diego