Beyond Circulation Statistics: Patterns Of Book Use By Undergraduate Students In An Academic Library

Librarians have used \u27use\u27 and \u27user\u27 studies as management techniques for improving and ensuring effective provision of information to the users. Many of these studies equate circulation statistics with the use of documents. The book-charge data are merely a representative of finding something of interest in the documents, and may not constitute \u27use\u27. The primary focus of this research study is to investigate and measure the use of the documents by a specific group of users. Users are defined as the undergraduate students in two academic institutions and documents are the books that are borrowed by the students from the library systems.;Meier\u27s item-use-day, Hamburg\u27s exposure time, and Kantor\u27s contact time were utilized to operationalize and measure \u27use\u27. Two types of data were used: diachronous data were gathered by the diary method and synchronous data were collected by the telephone interviews. The results of the study show that: (1) The cumulative distribution of book-use is of a linear-log type, similar in shape to a Bradford type distribution. (2) The distribution of contact times over retention period is stationary. (3) The contact time frequency distribution belongs to a double parameter gamma distribution. (4) The average contact time from a diachronous sample may be approximately estimated from the average contact time from a synchronous sample. The average total contact time per book is about twice the average daily contact time per book for the undergraduate students of the same university. (5) Contact time does not depend on the students\u27 major area of study. (6) The average or median total contact times per student per twenty-four hour period are not significantly different between two academic institutions. (7) Contact times are independent from the subject concentration of the books, or the purposes for which they are borrowed.;Some of the implications of this research study for the library managers have been discussed

The Law of Exponential Growth: Evidence, Implications and Forecasts

published or submitted for publicatio

Web Portal Design Guidelines as Identified by Children through the Processes of Design and Evaluation

The Web is an important source of information for school projects, but young users do not always find it easy to locate relevant material. A critical factor in success is the portal through which they search or browse web content. Traditionally web portals have been designed by adults with young users in mind, but there is very little evidence that the latter make use of them. In this paper design guidelines are elaborated for such portals that are based upon focus group and operational evaluations by elementary school students of two prototype web portals designed by two intergenerational teams, each comprising elementary school students and adult designers. The evaluations offer strong support for involving children throughout the design process for portals that both in presentation and functionality reflect the cognitive and affective needs of young users rather than adults

Web Portal Design Guidelines as Identified by Children through the Processes of Design and Evaluation

The Web is an important source of information for school projects, but young users do not always find it easy to locate relevant material. A critical factor in success is the portal through which they search or browse web content. Traditionally web portals have been designed by adults with young users in mind, but there is very little evidence that the latter make use of them. In this paper design guidelines are elaborated for such portals that are based upon focus group and operational evaluations by elementary school students of two prototype web portals designed by two intergenerational teams, each comprising elementary school students and adult designers. The evaluations offer strong support for involving children throughout the design process for portals that both in presentation and functionality reflect the cognitive and affective needs of young users rather than adults

Interface Design, Web Portals, and Children

Children seek information in order to complete school projects on a wide variety of topics, as well as to support their various leisure activities. Such information can be found in print documents, but increasingly young people are turning to the Web to meet their information needs. In order to exploit this resource, however, children must be able to search or browse digital information through the intermediation of an interface. In particular, they must use Webbased portals that in most cases have been designed for adult users. Guidelines for interface design are not hard to fi nd, but typically they also postulate adult rather than juvenile users. The authors discuss their own research work that has focused upon what young people themselves have to say about the design of portal interfaces. They conclude that specifi c interface design guidelines are required for young users rather than simply relying upon general design guidelines, and that in order to formulate such guidelines it is necessary to actively include the young people themselves in this process. (from the article)published or submitted for publicatio

Library and Information Studies Curriculum

Based on a presentation at the 27th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, June 9 - 12, 1999.This exploratory study attempts to map the curricula of the ALA accredited LIS programs to provide a better understanding of the nature of LIS education as is currently prevalent in the United States and Canada. The mapping methodology is based on clustering keywords of individual course titles and course descriptions from each LIS program. Hence, the study provides a relatively accurate snapshot of the curricula through a concept intensity map of the subjects being presently taught in LIS programs. It is hoped that the map will contribute to discussions in designing a more cohesive LIS education