College and Research Libraries An Analysis of F acuity Circulation In a University Library THE CUSTOMARY TABULATIONS of library circulation (by month, year and other periods; by subject classification; and by faculty, student and other users) provide information of some value, but other ~inds of analysis would also be helpful ~n formulating decisions on library pol- Icy. In the college or university library additional facts on faculty use should b~ particularly useful. .Ac.c~rding to evidence cited by Mary VIrginia Gaver, 1 there is on the elemen- tary school level a positive relationship between both the reading habits and library backgrounds of teachers and those of their students. Waples2 found the coefficient of correlation between the number of library loans per college student and per capita charges by faculty to. be + .66. These findings, taken along with. ~o~mon observations, suggest the p~ssibihty ~f a causal relationship. If this conclusiOn be even partially justi- fied, it becomes highly important that the university library stimulate greater use by the faculty, who then may influ- ence students. Any facts which can be garnered about faculty library habits ought to facilitate this task. Information about faculty circulation may also prove useful in determining departmental allotments for purchase of books and periodicals. Of the criteria for such decisions given in most standard texts, one usually concerns relative amount of lib~ary use by each field 1 yet 1 Mary Virginia Gaver, "Research on Elementary School Libraries," ALA Bulletin, LVI (1962) 120. 2 D~>Uglas W~ple~, " The Library," in The Eval~tation vf .H~gher In.shtuhons , Vol. 4 (Chicago: University of Chtcago Press, 1936), pp. 54, 65, 66 . JULY 1963 BY ROBERT N. BROADUS Mr. Broadus is Associate Professor of Li- brary Science in Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. tabulations of faculty circulation statis- tics ~re seldom made by department. With these points in mind, the writer noted all books checked out by the fac- ulty from the library of a midwestern university throughout the spring semes- ter, 1962, and analyzed the charges by rank and department of instruction. Table I, giving the number of books circulated to the entire faculty by· aca- demic level, shows that the amount of such use did not vary greatly from rank to rank, though the average for associate professors was somewhat high; for the full professors it was slightly low. Per- haps it is wise not to theorize about the reasons. The totals given in Table I include the teachers in the University School (grades K-9), which has its own library and whose forty-four teachers accounted for sixty-two circulations. With this group eliminated, the totals become 397 faculty and 2836 books charged, or an average of 7.1 for the semester. These figures may be compared with t~e tre~d s~ggested in a recent report of CirculatiOn In another university library: in 1946-47 the annual (presumably sum- mer session plus two semesters) circula- tion for ninety-nine faculty members av- eraged thirty-five; in 1959-60 the average for 200 faculty was seventeen.a 3 Patrick Barkey, "More on the 'Absent Professors' " Library fmtrnal, LXXXVII (1962), 1346. ' 323 TABLE I SEMESTER BoOK CIRCULATION BY FACULTY RANK Number Checking Books Checked Out Number in Out One or More Total Number of per Faculty Rank University Profe sor 96 Associate professor 96 Assistant professor 149 Instructor 100 -- Total 441 Not included in Table I, of course, is circulation of periodicals, recordings, and other materials. More important, there is no indication of use of materials within the library. However, it is appar- ent that faculty backs are not breaking under the load of library books. The complaint of Josey4 that "Many of these academicians never visit the library un- • E. J. Josey, "The Absent Professors," Library Journal, LXXXVII (1962), 173. Books Books Checked Out Member 51 539 5.6 59 756 7.9 84 990 6.6 53 613 6.1 -- -- 247 2898 6.6 less the president or dean calls a faculty meeting there" may be well-founded. Fortunately the wide availability of pa- perbacks provides a convenient excuse. Table II shows the analysis by depart- ments of instruction, omitting all faculty not directly concerned with classroom teaching. Whether the registrar, coun- selors and others use the library is im- portant, but their library circulation cannot be credited (or charged) to any TABLE II Department Art Biological Sciences Business Chemistry . Earth Sciences Economics . Education . English Foreign Language History Home Economics Industrial Arts Journalism Library Staff Library Science Mathematics Music Nursing Education Philosophy Physical Education Physics Political Science . Psychology Sociology-Anthropology Speech . University School Total 324 SEMESTER CIRCULATION TO CLASSROOM FACULTY BY DEPARTMENT OF INSTRUCTION Number of Faculty Total Number of Total Number Checking Out Books Checked Out of Faculty One or More Books by Faculty 12 8 61 14 12 185 23 10 82" 11 11 69 11 6 54 4 2 38 41 13 194 34 30 578 9 6 138 17 12 265 9 2 69 11 5 38 3 2 4 20 19 203 4 4 82 18 10 45 17 8 72 6 3 36 4 4 37 28 7 20 6 4 130 7 6 114 7 5 20 7 7 43 21 10 74 44 7 62 -- -- -- 388 215 2713 Number of Books Checked Out per Faculty Member 5.1 13.2 3.6 6.3 4.9 9.5 4.7 17.0 15.3 15.6 7.7 3.5 1.3 10.1 20.5 2.5 4.2 6.0 9.3 .7 21.7 16.3 2.9 6.1 3.5 1.4 7.0 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES given . department. In this table some similar departments (e.g.~ Women's and Men's Physical Education) are given to- gether. Obviously some departments are too small to lend their statistics much significance. It is interesting to note that the high average of the library science department was exceeded only by physics at 21.7 per capita, and that only the departments of sociology and anthropology, chemistry, library science, and philosophy had ev- ery member checking out at least one book during the semester. The 10.1 figure for the library staff does not reflect the considerable number of books borrowed while being proc- essed.5 As a part of the same study, an effort was made to determine whether new book lists have an influence on faculty circulation. At the university in ques- tion, a monthly list of selected titles was mailed by the library to each faculty 5 An interesting note in this connection is the state- ment of one college librarian: "I find the books in our cataloging room tantalizing and tempting, and am like- ly to sneak out books that are waiting there for Li- brary of Congress cards." Flora B. Ludington, "The Librarian's Reading, Personal and Professional," Illi- nois Libraries, XLIV (1962), 355. Selected Reference Books . (Contimted from page 322) ATLASES Kovalevskii, Petr Evgrafovich. Atlas historique et culture[ de la Russie et du monde slave. Paris, Elsevier, [1961]. 216p. il., maps. 59.50 n.f. Here is a superior illustrated history of the Slavic world from earliest times to the present, with emphasis on cultural contributions and the varying development of its component nations and cultures. The 630 black-and-white illustra- tions include many photographs of outstanding works of art. The text incorporates some of the results of recent archaeological research on the medieval period, according to general references to these materials in the introduction. There is a bibliography of Western language works, and sixteen colored plates of maps. The volume is well printed and bound. It is recommended for college and larger public libraries.-E.B. JULY 196J member who wished to receive it. Two of these lists were checked against actual circulation to the faculty. On one month- ly list, containing 232 titles shelved in the stacks, seven were charged out by the faculty within thirty days of receipt of the list. The · other list included 280 stack titles, of which fifteen were checked out by the faculty within thirty days. Among these fifteen were three which had been requested for order by the per- sons who checked them out. It may be concluded that these partic- ular lists were relatively ineffective in stimulating faculty circulation. This part of the study suggests the possibility of experimental changes in format and presentation of such lists, with measure- ment of results. To conclude: because so much of the success of the university library depends on the faculty, it is highly important that we learn more of their library ha-bits with respect to particular subject fields, and in various types of institutions. The analysis of such facts should furnish ma- terial for realistic planning as we at- tempt further to stimulate faculty use. •• USSR. Glavnoe upravlenie geodezii i kartografii. Atlas SSSR. Moskva, 1962. 185p. 39cm. 5 rubles. This is a general atlas for the USSR, with three principal sections: general geographical maps, maps of natural conditions, and economic maps. According to the introduction, geographi- cal maps are on a scale of 1:3 or 1:4 million, with a few areas at 1:8 million. Economic maps refer to industrial development as of 1960, and agriculture in 1959, with projections. Place name changes through the end of 1961 are in- cluded. There is an index of 25,000 geographical names. In general the quality of color work, printing, and paper is superior to that of pre- viously available one-volume atlases for the USSR alone, published in the Soviet Union.- E.B. •• 325