Trend Analysis of Monograph Acquisition in Public and University Libraries in the UK

Citation

Harrison, D. (2000), "Trend Analysis of Monograph Acquisition in Public and University Libraries in the UK", Library Review, Vol. 49 No. 7, pp. 351-360. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2000.49.7.351.10

LISU Occasional Paper No 25. The report is also available at http://www.ukoln.ac/bib‐man/surveys/acquis/

This study, which is published in the form of an A4 wire‐bound document, seeks to identify a number of trends relating to monograph acquisitions and stock management in academic and public libraries in the UK taken over the 20‐year period from 1980 to 1999. The UKOLN cataloguing database was used as a starting point and information from the Book Data database and Whitaker was added. However, it should be noted that the subject and format analyses use data from 1984 onwards, due to the comparative lack of information available for the period 1980‐83. These three files were amalgamated and analysed using the well‐known social science software SPSS to determine “the time between publication and acquisition, the proportion of hardbacks and paperbacks purchased … , the pattern of acquisition of different subject categories … and the price at the time of publication”. Public libraries have been examined separately from their academic colleagues in this study.

The report suggests possible reasons for the delay between publication and acquisition, the split between paperback and hardback purchases, the proportion of acquisitions by subject, the price of publications purchased and the stock retention rates of academic and public libraries. However, the authors modestly advocate that more focussed work will be needed to come to definite conclusions and, in the meantime, propose a number of questions for librarians and their book trade colleagues. These questions suggest that public libraries are revising their stock too infrequently, that suppliers favour new titles in their “on approval” selections, and that librarians increasingly rely on interlending rather than purchase expensive titles. Proportionally increasing paperback edition purchases is likely to be carried for a number of complex reasons and may be a result of format availability or due to reducing book fund availability. The report does not answer these points, but it does seek to demonstrate that they need to be addressed.

Based on the experience of the report before us, this reviewer would like to add a further question to those listed above. If the study is available freely from the UKOLN Web site to download in seconds to one’s PC, such that it can be saved to a file and/or printed out in full, including the many illustrative tables, graphs and diagrams, why make the thing available at a cost of £17.50 in the rather unattractive hard‐copy format described above? The copyright, legal and economic implications of this approach seem to lack any consistency.

The authors, who are well known in the field of statistical bibliographic research represent the Universities of Bath (Ann Chapman – UKOLN) and Loughborough (David Spiller – LISU).