A longitudinal study of the use of library books by undergraduate students

摘要

The purpose of this second article on the use of library documents by undergraduate students is to determine the use of the books during every day of the loan period. Student volunteers employed structured diaries to record the time they spent browsing/reading borrowed library books during a two month period. The results show that for a particular university, the average time spent browsing/reading a book is about fifty minutes per user per day. The average total contact time per book during the retention period is 131 minutes, and hence the major portion of use occurs during two days of the loan period. The frequency distribution of contact times belong to a double parameter gamma distribution family. The results also substantiate the outcome of the previous cross-sectional study.