“The problem of the unused book”…still

First, I should explain my absence…I’ve become temporarily disabled by a broken foot.  To those who know my alternate life, no, it was not from playing hockey (although if it was, at least I’d have been having fun breaking it).  Simply missing a step on the stairway in our house led to the loss of my hockey season, spending upwards or $1500 (after insurance), and missing at least two weeks of work.  Now, back to our regular broadcast.

I am trying to write a literature about the analysis of book circulation data for an article that will focus on the distribution of book circulations.  When I write literature reviews, I like to try to find temporal trends in research on whatever topic it is – I think it enables me to put the research into context.  In my literature searching, I came across this article:

Problem of the unused book.(1911). Library Journal (1876)., 36, 428-429.

So, even as far back as 1911, librarians were concerned about this problem.  I am constantly amazed at how little in our field has really changed.  Not even the solutions are much different – display “dying” books to regenerate interest, and put “dead” books into storage.

This article is intriguing because it includes a breakdown by year last used.  I’ve attempted to supplement the analysis, reversing the years since last year used to provide a different perspective.

Last Used	Num. Titles	Cumulative Total	% of Not Used	Cum. % of Not Used	% of All Titles	Cum. % of All Titles
1908	3585	3585	26.8%	26.8%	5.59%	5.59%
1907	2184	5769	16.3%	43.1%	3.40%	8.99%
1906	1439	7208	10.8%	53.9%	2.24%	11.23%
1905	1107	8315	8.3%	62.1%	1.73%	12.96%
1904	781	9096	5.8%	68.0%	1.22%	14.18%
1903	626	9722	4.7%	72.6%	0.98%	15.15%
1902	480	10202	3.6%	76.2%	0.75%	15.90%
1901	474	10676	3.5%	79.8%	0.74%	16.64%
1900	403	11079	3.0%	82.8%	0.63%	17.27%
1899	359	11438	2.7%	85.5%	0.56%	17.83%
1898	234	11672	1.7%	87.2%	0.36%	18.19%
1897	237	11909	1.8%	89.0%	0.37%	18.56%
1896	218	12127	1.6%	90.6%	0.34%	18.90%
1895	125	12252	0.9%	91.5%	0.19%	19.10%
1894	185	12437	1.4%	92.9%	0.29%	19.38%
1893	77	12514	0.6%	93.5%	0.12%	19.50%
1892	60	12574	0.4%	94.0%	0.09%	19.60%
1891	45	12619	0.3%	94.3%	0.07%	19.67%
1890	37	12656	0.3%	94.6%	0.06%	19.73%
1889	25	12681	0.2%	94.8%	0.04%	19.76%
1888	22	12703	0.2%	94.9%	0.03%	19.80%
1887	13	12716	0.1%	95.0%	0.02%	19.82%
1886	51	12767	0.4%	95.4%	0.08%	19.90%
1885	2	12769	0.0%	95.4%	0.00%	19.90%
Never	614	13383	4.6%	100.0%	0.96%	20.86%
Total	13,383		4.0%		20.86%

So…21% (13,383 titles) of the collection (n=64,162) had not been used in the last 2 years.  It is evident that the bulk of the unused titles are more recent, suggesting that it takes time for books to become noticed and used by patrons.  The famous (infamous?) “Pittsburgh Study” tracked usage of books added the collection over five years.  They found that 60% of these titles had not circulated over that same time period (Bulick, 1976).  Based on the data above, the problem of time-in-collection is apparent.  However, other research has clearly shown a decrease in the probability of use over time (Chen, 1976; Jain, et al. 1969).

What is not stated in the article above, however, is their weeding policies.  Were they removing books that had not been used and were deemed undesirable to keep?  The tone of the article suggests that they were not, that this was a novel assessment, indeed removing items entirely from the collection that were still in good shape was not even an option.

Interestingly, they even broke down usage by broad Dewey call number ranges:

Class	Subject	Vols. In Library	Vols. not used in last two years	% Not Used
000	Polygraphy	3057	691	22.60%
100	Philosophy	1162	250	21.51%
200	Religion	3023	693	22.92%
300	Sociology	4333	1226	28.29%
400	Philology	1226	95	7.75%
500	Natural Science	4785	911	19.04%
600	Useful Arts	2667	543	20.36%
700	Fine Arts	2236	347	15.52%
800	Literature	6447	1394	21.62%
910-919	Travel	5226	940	17.99%
920	Biography	5311	1899	35.76%
Other 900’s	History	6690	1568	23.44%

Their explanation for the high rate of disuse for biographies was their policy to collect titles “written and published from a sense of duty, as pious memorials, rather than for any real literary or historical reason…”.  Generally, there appears to be a direct relationship between collection size and percent not used.  Here’s the scatterplot of these two variables, with the regression formula for the linear trendline:

Direct relationship of collection size & disuse

The effect (0.05) is modest, indicating that for every increase of titles in the collection, the percentage of disuse increases .05%, but the fit (R2) is also modest, explaining only about 23% of the variation.  The correlation coefficient (R, not listed here) is 0.48, which is moderately strong.  So it is clear that the size of the collection could have some effect on the usage, in that the fewer items there are, the lower rate of disuse.  This conclusion should not be extended to the end of reducing ones collections.  After all, if this were true, then you would not be seeing the explosion of choices available on retail shelves.  There is more going on here than a simple cause-effect relationship.

Well, my tangent has come to an end.  I am the more wiser to know that the library data has, indeed, been analyzed to explore such problems and derive solutions.  It would be nice to see the data on the effects of their solutions.

References

Bulick, S. (1976). Use of library materials in terms of age. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 27, 175-178.
Chen, C. (1976). Applications of operations research models to libraries : A case study of the use of monographs in the francis A. countway library of medicine, harvard university. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Jain, A. K., Leimkuhler, F. F., & Anderson, V. L. (1969). A statistical model of book use and its application to the book storage problem. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 64(328), 1211-1224. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2286062.

NOTE: I’ve reproduced the article below for my readers’ reference.  This article was published before 1925, and thus is in the public domain.

Associations weigh in on how to gauge post-college outcomes @insidehighered\

Associations weigh in on how to gauge post-college outcomes @insidehighered.

If this were adopted, where would libraries fit in?

When I originally posted this here, I did not have time to write or indeed, even read it thoughtfully.   Now that I have, here are my thoughts – which may or may not be worth a plug nickel.

Like the information literacy skills we, as a profession, um, profess, I looked at the responsible parties of the content: a partnership of 3 higher-ed organizations – the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).  These groups have been heavily involved in the student outcomes trend for some time now, at least individually.  With funding from the  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, they have gotten together to develop this framework.  Now, the B&MGF has been criticized for being too focused on measurable outcomes, the idea of which can be stifling to educators who are focused on educating the human mind.  So such efforts are often viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Next to examine is the goal or purpose of their work – why did they do this?  Why publish it?  Why promote it?  From the IHE article,

A key goal, they said, was to encourage policy makers to use appropriate measures of post-college success, rather than just available or simple ones.

And from the executive summary (emphasis added by me),

to create a framework and application tools that will enable colleges and universities, policymakers, and the public to better understand and talk about post collegiate outcomes in areas such as economic well-being, ongoing personal development, and social and civic engagement. The development of the framework and the accompanying tools are an important first step toward the creation of common metrics and indicators for use by institutions to report a more comprehensive set of post collegiate outcomes.

So it seems to me that the groups, which represent different levels, and often different stages, of higher education at both the individual student and the educational system level, were trying to get on the same page, so to speak.

Now, what do they say?  Well, the graph highlighted in the IHE article pretty much says it all:

Figure 1: PCO Framework

It’s interesting to me that they reduced some incredibly abstract ideas into a two-dimensional chart, but that is not uncommon.  Perhaps it is due to the fact that we are still communicating in two-dimensions – a hologram would be able to add a 3rd dimension.  But even that would be too limiting.  Oh well…So, this is what they presented – two dimensions of student outcomes:  public/personal and economic/human capital.  This is an improvement on the more conservative approach that suggests that higher education is primarily a personal, economic benefit, and thus should be paid for by the individual, and not society.

Figure 3: Examples of Outcomes Across the Framework

Actually, these examples do not seem to live up to their own goals of not relying on simple and easy to get measures.  Earnings, for example – this is already being used, and with much criticism.  Because there is much disparity in earnings by professions, it is not a reliable measure of student outcomes.  Comparing the earnings of programs or institutions which focus on STEM with liberal arts institutions or humanities programs leads to great disparities.  It is not an indicator of quality. However, if earnings is a measure considered equally among many, and if it will be compared in a relative manner (comparing like programs or like institutions), then it may be considered by some to be fair to include it.

So, with these examples in mind, I return to my original question, Where do libraries fit in?  How do librarians contribute to these outcomes?  Where can we improve?  Certainly just be continuing to do our jobs well, librarians and the resources we provide contribute to the education of our students.  But that, of course, is not measurable.  In what ways and how much do we contribute?

Thoughts that have occurred to me include engaging students with resources, instruction & activities associated with…

• career selection, which contributes to career satisfaction
• professionalism, which contributes to career advancement
• critical thinking and social responsibility, which contributes to voting participation, charitable donations, employability, and, well, everything
• personal and public financial management, which contributes to voting participation, lower student debt, and employability
• …well, I could go on, but I think you get the drift.

How can measure our contributions to these outcomes?  It won’t be easy.  It’s one thing to demonstrate what we do, but it’s much harder to assess the impact of what we do on these outcomes.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.  Not much to brag about, but nice to see, and a few things to think about.  I’m pleased that the visitors came from over 40 countries – of course, I’m not sure if these were actual readers, or robots or other automated visits.  I wish my stories generated more comments – I really like starting conversations and seeing where they go.  I try hard to ensure that my blog doesn’t simply pass on news stories that are available through a dozen other sources, nor that I focus too much on myself or my own experiences.  So the volume is not very large, but the level of thought I put into most posts is.  Despite what appears to be only modest success, this blog provides me with a venue to project my ideas, reflect on the often conflicting and confusing information, and generate knowledge for the betterment of my profession.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 28 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.