Catalog use study : with reference to universities in Daegu

대학도서관의 목록이용연구

This paper gives a summary and overview of a survey conducted at the catalogues of five universities in Daegu during November 1982. The major objective of this study was to secure information about user needs in order to improve the catalogue in Korean university libraries. Data was collected by a combined method of questionnaire and interview. A total of 379 respondents were taken on a randomly selected sample of catalogue users. Results of the survey can be summarized as follows: 1. Eighty-eight percent of the students answered that they had used the library more than twice a month. Nevertheless the number of students consulting the catalogue with the same frequency was only 220, or a n.0, pproximately 58 percent. Those who used the library most tended to use the catalogue more than those who rarely came to the library. 2. Those who had been shown how to use their own catalogue were only 32.5percent of which the students found the instruction sufficient for them to be able to use the catalogue were only 37.5 percent. In particular, they stated that instructions by printed materials and/or library orientation were so poor that they didn't give much help in using the catalogue. This problem makes many libraries to review their own method of instruction in order to encourage patrons to use the catalogue more effectively. 3. Most of the students consulted the catalogue in order to locate library materials. Known-item searches and subject searches were 84 and 16 percent respectively. While 70.5 percent of the students used the author-title catalogue without any difficulties, only 35.5 percent of those stated that using the classed catalogue was easy. 4. It was surprising that the number of students using title access in the search was far greater than that of students using author access. In contrast with this, other studies conducted by many earlier overseas investigators revealed that the great majority of patrons tended to use the latter first. Therefore, we should put more emphasis on the title entries in the catalogue itself as well as cataloging rules. 5. Most useful bibliographic elements in the entry were author, title, call number, date and publisher whereas edition, series statement and the location of publisher were rarely used compared with the other elements. Content note was the most desirable element in the entry to be involved, for many catalogers were used not to describe it on the note area. 6. The chief reason given for not using the catalogue was "I can manage without it" with "It's difficult to understand contents of the card entry." The other one was "It's useless to search materials by the catalogue because I've failed so many times to obtain them out of the stock." In response to this, circulation and acquisition system should be improved not to make such complaints any more.