ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Lazerow research on cataloging needs

Ed. note:Here is a brief report on research funded by ACRL’s 1996 Samuel Lazerow Fellowship Award.

How useful are data in catalog records? Thanks to the Samuel Lazerow Fellowship Award, we investigated the value graduate students at the University of Florida (UF) place on different parts of the bibliographic record. In January 1997 we sent a survey to a random sample of UF graduate students asking them to respond to statements about the usefulness of parts of catalog records for all types of library materials and the usefulness of information describing Internet resources. The survey was completed by 453 students.

Preliminary analysis of average responses shows strong levels of agreement with the usefulness of primary author/editor and title in catalog records. They disagreed with the usefulness of information about illustrations and physical size. They also indicated agreement with the usefulness of additional authors/editors, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, pagination, contents notes, summary note/abstract, references, index, series title, assigned subject terms, related works, and standard numbers.

Regarding Internet resources, they strongly agreed with the usefulness of primary author/ editor/creator, title, Internet address, and summary note/abstract. They also agreed with the usefulness of additional authors/editors, place of publication/origin, publisher/distributor/ corporate sponsor, date of creation/publication, date of most recent update, designation of edition/version/issue, size of file, graphics, recommended software for access/downloading, system requirements, note on level of information provided, frequency of issue/revision, access limits, assigned subject terms, related works, and standard numbers.

We also solicited responses to general statements regarding their use of the library’s resources and Internet access. Our students vary considerably in their areas of study and in their responses to our questions. Average responses indicate agreement that the catalog and library indexes are useful, and that it is useful that materials on each subject are shelved together and authors are indexed with cross references. There was agreement that Internet access has become a significant method to obtain information needed in their studies and that it is useful to have Internet resources listed and linkable through the library catalog. However, the students disagreed that the library has assisted them in using information through the Internet and that they have used Internet resources they found out about through the library catalog.

We plan to publish a fuller report of this research and feel that this study has increased out understanding of what some of our users want from the library catalog. We hope it will lead to definitive research toward optimizing description of all types of information for all users.—Jimmie Lundgren and Betsy Simpson, University of Florida