Academic
A survey in 1970 of the users of a library book delivery system for the campus of the University of Colorado (survey population: 377; responding: 208 or 55% [of whom 89% were resident teaching faculty]) showed that33% of the faculty had used it during the first 18 months of its operation, with 68% of the respondents rating the service as excellent and 23% rating the service as good. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatof those responding 46% were in the humanities and social sciences; 36% were in the pure and applied sciences; 13% were in interdisciplinary institutes; and 4% were administrators or no answer. (Source)
Ibid…. showed that54% of the respondents reported that the campus book delivery system had changed their pattern of library use. The main reasons given were saved time, library easier to use, and library more convenient to use. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatafter 18 months of the campus book delivery operation 43% of the respondents assessed the service as either important or essential to their work. (Source)
A sample of faculty patrons before (1971) and after (1972) the installation of departmental microfiche catalogs of the collection and an accompanying twice-daily book delivery system at Georgia Tech showed thatthe new system changed the way faculty retrieved books from the library. Phone requests increased from 0 to 21.6% of total checkouts, books obtained by going to the library decreased from 88% to 71.6% of total checkouts, and books obtained by sending someone else to the library decreased from 10.5% to 2.7%. (Source)
A comparison reported in 1975 of circulation statistics at the Georgia Tech library for Spring quarter 1971 and Spring quarter 1972, before and after they had installed microfiche catalogs for the collection in 35 academic and research departments and an accompanying twice-daily book delivery service, showed thatfaculty book circulation as a percentage of total book circulation increased from 13% to 16%, a statistically significant difference. (Source)
A study reported in 1977 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus concerning attitudes held by heads of academic units toward departmental libraries independent of the university library system (sample size: 167; responding: 108 or 64.7%, including 67 respondents with independent departmental libraries and 41 respondents without such libraries) showed that, of the respondents with independent departmental libraries, a document delivery system was considered “helpful” by 79% [no raw number given] and “essential” by 15% [no raw number given], while of those respondents without an independent departmental library, a document delivery system was considered “helpful” by 66% [no raw number given] and “essential” by 17% [no raw number given]. (Source)
A study reported in 1978 at Indiana University, Bloomington, of materials requested through a delivery service to faculty in the political science and economics departments during a 32-month period (October 1972-Junc 1975), involving 39 political scientists and 14 economists (40-50% of the faculty in the departments) and 5,478 articles from 620 different journals and newspapers, showed thatavailability of the materials requested on the delivery service, based on 2,544 requests and a library policy that did not allow periodicals to circulate outside of the library, was as follows:
90% of the material was immediately available;
98% of the material was ultimately available from the library’s holdings;
and an additional 1% was available through interlibrary loan. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatwhen the delivery service supplied copies of contents pages, 30.3% of all requests for material were the result of this current awareness service, which was used by 40 (64%) of the faculty. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatthe chief reason for a journal being unavailable was reshelving, which accounted for 56% of the unavailable journals. (Source)
Ibid…. showed that9 titles accounted for 20.2% of the requests, while 43 titles accounted for 50.3% of the requests. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatarticles published after 1950 (the study concluded June 1975) accounted for 97.6% of the requests. (Source)
Ibid…. showed thatfor economists 5 journal titles accounted for 25.5% of all requests, while 25 journal titles accounted for 60.1% of all requests. For political scientists 11 journal titles accounted for 25.9% of all requests, while 56 titles accounted for 60.1% of the requests. (Source)