Annals of Library Science and Documentation 1991,38(3),99-107

STOCK EVALUATION AND USER NEEDS

The study shows how the selection of core journalscould be made from the requests made by the users.It also gives in detail the mode of meeting therequirements of the staff and the students in theuniversity library under different conditions. Areasof low use of the library are indicated and furtherinvestigations in that area are suggested.

INTRODucnONThe problem of 'who selects' the reading mate-rial for the library has given way to a more acuteproblem of 'what to select'. It is a well known factthat the number of journal titles, especially inthe field of science, increase proportionately withknowledge. To keep the scientist abreast of newknowledge in a given field it is essential toacquire most of the publications in that field.This is constrained by factors like limitations infunds and foreign exchange. Therefore a librar-ian faces a number of problems in building agood collection in the library.As a result of the current economic situation inNigeria, the question of what constitutes thecore journals has posed aserious problem to theNigerian librarians, especially to those attachedto the institutions of higher learning. The eco-nomic measures adopted by the NigerianGovernment in 1982 made it unusally difficultfor the librarians to acquire optimum number ofrelevant materials in the library. The acquisitionof books and periodicals in the library was af-fected most by the foreign exchange problem inthe country. The problem of acquisition ofbooks could be solved to some extent becausethey were to be purchased locally from booksellers and did not involve any foreignexchange.

Onadiran and Onadiran [1] discovered that thebulk of the library material in the university

Vol 38 No 3 Sept 1991

PC AZIAGBAScience LibrarianUniv. of Port Harcourt,Choba, P.M.B. 5323,Port Harcourt,NIGERIA

libraries in Nigeria was acquired from foreigncountries like United States, Britain and West-ern Europe and hence, required a big amount offoreign exchange, Various other reports oncollection development have also revealed thatnot only the funds, but the lack of foreignexchange was also a big constraint in building upa collection of periodical literature. Obiagwu[2] also described how difficult it was to makeforeign exchange available for purcahse of booksand periodicals. The only option left for thelibrarians in such cases is to discontinue the sub-scription of a number of journals.The recent move of the Federal Governmentemphasizing on building up the stock of thelibraries, offers help to the university librariesto acquire more number of books and journals.This aid from the federal government is avail-able only for three years and if the acquisition ofuncontrolable number of journals is startednow, their continuation in due course, when theaid stops, may not be possible. In view of this aranked list of journals according to their use wasthought to be of immense help while discontinu-ingsome of them. Such a list can be relied uponfor selection of journals to be continued forsubscription.

Therefore, a survey was carried out for thescience journals in the science section of theUniversity of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) li-brary to evolve a list of most used journals.

OBJECT1VES

The aim of this study is to identify the most usedscience journals at the University of Port Har-court library. This would bea list of core journalsfor the departments in the faculty of science.The study is also aimed to identify the depart-

99

ments which make comparatively less use ofresearch material and the reasons for it,

LITERATIJRE REVIEWMany people have written on collection devel-opment in libraries and compilation of lists ofjournals relevant to the interests of the users.Bolgiano et. al [3] Guyatt [4 & 5], Guya andMosher [6] studied the problems associatedwith selection of journals and made some obser-vations on users co-operation in this process. Itwas established in the above studies that thelibrary has to support research on a number ofdisciplines to a satisfactory level by its collectionof monographs, periodicals, etc. Solutions werealso proposed on how to arrive at a concrete andaccurate information guide for making deci-sion on continuation/discontinuation ofsubscrip-tion tQ some of the journals.McElroy [7] and Sandison [8] had defined theadequate stock to fulfil the requirements. Theformer ana lysed the stock in the departmentsand its users and found that the stock was usedmore by the senior staff. While the later calcu-lated "uses per-issue-per-day" by "dividing thetotal number of users by the total for all avail-able issues of the number of days each had been011 the shelf when the library was open andranked the lists according to their number ofuses". To make such stock reliable it must havebeen arrived at after evaluation for severalmonths.The use of questionnaire was also reported byRoger [9] and Van Styvendaele [10] for assess-ment of the requirements of scholars.The method of survey employed in this studywas based on the lists provided by students andthe lecturers of various departments in the uni-versity. Guyatt [4] used lists of publications byresearchers, while Dhawan et al, [11] listed thetitles of journals from primary and secondarysources of literature and compared them withthe journals available in the library. Bolgiano[3] used citations in theses for compilation of aworking list for acquisition of periodicals in thelibrary.

UNIPORT LIBRARY SCENARIOAs stated earlier, this study is based on the stockavailable at UNIPORT Library. The main li-brary formerly held journals for all departmentsbut now with the expectation of setting up fac-ulty libraries at different places in due course,100

AZIAGBA

the holdings oC the main library would bedivided into the faculty libraries for the followingsubject groups:

Pure and Applied Science comprisingscience, engineering and medicine.Human Science comprising humanities,social sciences and management science.Education,

There was a break in acquisition of books andjournals as reported by Obiagwu [12] in theuniversity library and a significant number ofjournals were discontinued. Now with the pro-vision of a loan from the World Bank for stockbuilding in the library, the acquisition ofjournals may be increased. Simultaneously,caution has to be taken regarding the number ofjournals to be subscribed because the loan isavailable only for three years and the subscrip-tion to some of the journals may have tc bestopped at the end of three years. Therefore, anattempt is made to prepare a list of core periodi-cals which may help the librarian to decidewhether to continue/discontinue a particular title.METHODOLOGY

The disciplines that make up the faculty of sci-ence were assigned classmarks according to theLIbrary of Congress Classification [13]Scheme.Publications in biochemistry are scattered underQH - biology, QD - chemistry and Or' -physiol-ogy depending on the orientation and inclina-tion of the contents. Therefore, a separateclassmark for biochemistry is not used as shownin Table 1which also gives the total number ofjournals in each subject.The journal or the research section of thelibrary has open access system for the lecturerswho are allowed to enter the library at any timewithin its working hours. Therefore, it is noteasy to calculate the frequency at which theyused the library. To study the use of librarymaterials by the lecturers, tney were asked tosend a list of journals they would like the libraryeither to retain or to add to the existing collec-tion. The lists submitted by them were comparedwith the journal titles, already available in thelibrary and a masterlist was prepared. The masterlist generated from the requisitions from (,:'l{'h

department was circulated to the lecturers witha request to tick the titles they have consulted inthe library.

Ann Lib Sci Doc

STOCK EVALUATION AND USER NEEDS

Table 1

Subject Distribution of Journals

Subject Library of CongressClassmark

No. of Journals heldunder theClassmark

Agriculture S 53

Biochemistry 16

Botany QK 29

Chemistry QD 84

Geology QE 36

Mathematics/Statistics/Computer Sciences QA 99

Microbiology QR 26

Physics QC 50

Zoology QL 51

Science (General) Q 45

Physiology QP 27

Biology QH 89

Astronomy QB 6

611

Due to lack of sufficient reading space and staffin the library, the student users from the facultyof science are allowed to use the library onlyonMondays and Tuesdays. They are not given freeaccess. They request for assistance at the servicedesk. Catalogue of the research materials ismaintained in the rotatory index, card catalogue

and compilations in booklets.

The users go through these sources and enterthe details of the required document on arequest slip and hand this slip over to thelibrary assistant. A specimen of the slip is shownin Fig. 1.

Vol 38 No 3 Sep11991 101

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UNIPORT LIBRARY

Fig. 1

Request Slip

Author: ~ _

Title: ------------------------ _

Call No:

Vol. No:

Ace. No: -----------

Years: _

Requestedby: _

Mat. No: --------------Dept: ------------

When more than one document are required at atime, the user makes use of the back of the slip.The required material is retrieved, the user'sidentity card is attached to the request slip andkept for records. The identity card is returnedwhen the material is returned. At the close of theday the slips are counted, recorded and stored.

The request slips formed the basis for study ofuse of the stock by the students. The requestslips-of the students in the faculty of sciencewere first sorted out. From this was calculatedthe number of users and the number of titlesconsulted per month.

Further, these slips were sorted into variousdepartments and a list of the titles requested bythe students in each department was produced.Classmark was assigned to each item listed.Journals having a c1assmark that corresponds tothe one assigned to any of the departments inTable 1were counted. These were considered asrequests from within the department. The re-quest slips belonging to other classrnarks werethe requests from outside the department. Thematerial not possessed by the library or enteredwrongly by users with incorrect details weresorted out from the lists.

Students and lecturers from the departments

102

that showed low use of the research library wereinterviewed personally to find out the reasonsfor poor use of the library by them.

Further, to confirm the validity of this com-puted list, the citation of these titles in thedissertations of earlier students was studied. Fivetheses/dissertation from each department wereselected and crosschecked for citation of thesetitles.

RESULTS AND FINDINGS

With reference to Table 1,out of the total stockof 611journals, the science library has maximumstock in mathematics, statistics and computerscience (99 titles) followed by biology (89 titles)and least in astronomy (6 titles). By physicalexamination of the journals, it was discoveredthat 16 titles in biochemistry were classifiedunder QH - biology, QD - chemistry and QP -physiology according to the subject content.

It was easy to study the use of library stock bystudents because of the tangible records on slipsprovided. It was not easy to eliminate theelement of bias appearing in the manner inwhich the lecturers ticked the journals they hadused. The journals ticked by a lecturer weretaken as core journals in that area. It is interest-

Ann Lib Sci Doc

4000 -

~,500

"0II)

::l 3,000IIIC0U

III 2,500Q)--i=.•..0 a ,0000z"'0c0 1,500III•..Q)III

~.•.. 1,0000

0z

250 -

STOCK EVALUATION AND USER NEEDS

.Tan. .Tuly Nov. Jon. Mar. MayMar. May Sep.

Months of the Year 1989 /90

Fig. 2: NUMBER OF USERS AND NUMBER OF TITLES CONSULTED WITHINTHE SURVEY PERIOD J"on.1989 -Moy 1990.

_ No. of Users No. of Tittles Consulted

Vol 38 No 3 Sept 1991 103

AZlAGBA

100r-------------------------------------------~90

70

60••II)

=I--0 400z

20

10•• "" >- >. "" '" ~ "" '" "" CP >- >-

""~ ~ e ~ 00 u co 8' 0 00 o 00 00

'" lit 0 ;; 0 "=- •• 0 c ..2 E E

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'" E..c

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s: •• (!) s: 0 N II) :>0- lD ~~ o s: _0 ~ ..c u;"" 0 U oU u a..<f ~~

<f

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104

Fig.3: USEFUL PORTION OF THE STOCK COMPARED WITH THE TOTALSTOCK IN EACH SUBJECT .

•.•-- ..•• Journals Held in the Subject

•.•__ •• Usable No. in each Subject that Form the Core.

Ann Lib Sci Doc

STOCK EVALUATION AND USER NEEDS

90r---------------------------------,

80

Ul-UlQ)

~60Q)

a:

-oo 40z

20

~ >- >- e >- ~ >-~ C 01 Q) CI1:::J - C u; 0 :; ., 0=: II)

'"E 'e 0 o, >- "0:::J 0 Q) E ..0 ..c0o Q) III 0 Q..

Q) (!) 0 N•.. ..c ..c0

...01 o 0 ...... o<l: 0 ., ~

III =e:::;:FigA: REQUEST SATISFIED WITH .JOURNALS IN THE SUBJECT

CLASSMARK AND THOSE FROM OTHER SUBJECT CLASSMARK.

__ Requests Satisfied from Deportment Classmark

~ Requests token from other Department Closs mark

Vol 38 No 3 Sept 1991 105

STOCK EVALUATION AND USER NEEDS

ing to note that all titles on a field available in thelibrary were not consulted by the lecturers in thatfield.The design of the request slip made it easy todifferentiate theslips used by the students fromthose used by the members of the faculty ofscience. Users could request for as many titles asthey wished. Fig. 2 shows the number of usersand the number of titles they consulted duringthe period January 1989 to May 1990. The high-est number of users were recorded to use thelibrary during August and October 1989. This isthe period of long vacation and the longvacation students outnumber the regular stu-dents. Their demand is equally higher as shownby the number of titles they consulted. The regu-lar students were in session during January toJuly 1989, November to December 1989 andJanuary to May 1990. April 1989was the periodwhen the students were writing their term pa-pers and dissertations. Within this period, theymade regular use of the library. The demandduring April to May 1990witnessed a decline ascompared to that of the previous year. This isbecause the students were on strike during thisperiod in 1990 and the lecturers were sus-pended.

The total number of journals possessed by thelibrary in each course is shown in Fig. 3 whichAlso displays the number of journals that arefound to be used by the staff and the students(the core journals). All the titles in biochemistryare- found to be useful as core collection. Thenumber of core journals are less than the totalnumber of journals in each course. This con-firms the findings that only a few titles serve theinformation needs of most of the users of thelibrary in each course and falls, roughly, in linewith Bradford's Law. Within the suvey period,no user requested for any title in astronomy.Tbe relative display of the requests met with bythe journals in the same classmark and outsideit is given in fig. 4.Microbiology has the highestnumber of requests satisfied by the journals fromwithin the classmark. The use of outside stockby microbiology department is equally high.Mathematics and physics department made lowuse ofthe stock within their department's class-mark. This area of poor use of the librarynecessitated further research to discover why thedemands of these departments were low. Theresult of the interview with the lecturers and106

students in mathematics department showed thatthere were no graduate students in the depart-ment, and the undergraduate students makemore use of textbooks than journals. The gradu-ate students in physics department also showedlow use of research materials because of thefacility of having the books and journals in theirdepartmental book store (not a library). Theywere also found to make use of other sourceslike the stock of their lecturers. However, theyfound the library book collection useful in theirseminars.It is to be noted that Agriculture is not a teachingcourse in this institution. It is only for research.Also there is no department of astronomy,physiology, biology or pure science. Thestock inthese areas were heavily used by the studentsand lecturers in other departments in the facultyof science. For instance, number of requests onAgriculture classmark were made by users fromother departments. Requests for the journals infisheries were made from the department ofZoology and those for the journals in cropscience were made from Botany department.

When the titles in the generated list were cross-checked with the references made by the stu-dents in the theses and dissertations at least tentitles available in the departments were foundlisted in them.

The final list which emanated from this studyconsisted of journals that were:a) Recommended by the lecturers for acquisi-

tion/continuation;b) Used by the lecturers;c) Requested by the students;d) Cited in theses/dissertations of former

stu dents.

CONCLUSIONThe investigation enabled the compilation ofthelist of the most used as well as that of the leastused journals. It can be used for making thedecision about continuation or discontinu-ation of subscription. It also highlights theimportance of the statistics maintained onuser's requests. The departments that make lowuse of the library have been identified. Furtherstudy could be carried out to find how best thescience library can provide services to its users.

Ann Lib Sci Doc

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REFERENCES 7. McDlroy R :Library-information serviceevaluation - a case history from pharma-

1. Onadiran CT and Onadiran R W: Devel ceutical R. and D. Aslib Proc 1982, 34(5),oping library collection in University Li 249-265bararies in Nigeria. Ann Lib Sci Doc 8. Sandison A :The use of scientific litera-1982,29(3),95-106. ture at the science referencelibrary for

updatingsearches.JDoc 1979,35(2),107-2. Obiagwu M C : Foreign exchange and 119.

library collection in Nigeria. InfDev 1987,3(1),154-160. 9. Rodger E: Pruning periodical subscrip

tion at Glasgow University Library.3. Bolgiano E and King M K: Profiling a pe- Aslib Proc 1978, 30(4),145-153.

riodical collection. ColI Res Lib 1978,39(2),99-104. 10. Van Styvendaele E J H :University scien-

tists as seekers of information - Source of4. Guyatt J: A study of the extent to which reference to periodical literataure. J Lib

the collection in one University Library 1977,9(4),270-277.met the information need of 47 active researchers. Lib Man 1982, 3(3), 30-42. 11. Dhawan S M, Phull S K and Jain S P :

Selection of scientific journals - a model.5. Guyatt J: A study of selection procedure J Doc 1980,36(1),24-41.

in one university library. Lib Man 1982,3(3),5-29. 12. Obiagwu C: Pattern of book selection in

academic libraries -The univesityofPort6. Mosher PH: Collection evaluation in Re- Harcourt Case. Lib Waves 1986, 1(1),53-

search libraries - The Search for quality, 68.consistency and system in collection development. Lib Res Ser 1979, 23(1), 16- 13. Library of Congress Classification - Sci-32. ence, 7th ed. 1989, Washington, Library

of Congress.

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