The Interpre~tio~ of ~~~~~~ Use in the Age of Digital Libraries: Virtualizing the Name

There have been numerous changes in the way that libraries organize information and how users seek, gain access to, and obtain library materials. These changes have modified many traditional library services, introduced new jargon, and created new library uses. If students are to become self-sustaining and effective users of information sources and services, they need to understand various library uses. This article reports a case study designed to examine the extent to which college students agree in interpreting the term library use. The degree of variation in how these students interpret basic library activities is high. The studys findings suggest that the notion of the library as a space is better agreed upon than the notion of the library as a store or service. Since the libruly use study is carried out in the context of rapidly changing information technology, this two-prong article will first discuss five different shifts that characterize the transitional nature of todays libraries; then the library use study will be discussed, and possible conclusions will be drawn. The findings have wide implications for designing user-centered information access instructional programs. We have witnessed numerous shifts in the way that libraries organize information and how users seek, gain access to, and obtain library materials. Library catalogs have shifted from an emphasis on providing access to bibliographic records that describe local library collections to an emphasis on distributed repositories of heterogeneous electronic data and associated metadata. Not only did the goals of online catalogs shifted, library users for the first time gained direct access to electronic collections worldwide through Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) and World Wide Web (WWW) technologies. These shifts have modified many traditional library services, introduced new jargon, and created new library uses. If

The author wishes to thank Sara Shatford Layne for her reading of this article and her comments.
Direct all correspondence to: Zorana Ercegovac, Department of Library and Information Science, Graduate School

of Education & Information Studies, 300 Circle Drive North, Mailbox 951521, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1521 czercegov@ucla.edux Library & Information Sdence Research, Volume 19, Number 1, pages 35-51 Copyright 8 1997 Ablex Publishing Corporation AU rights of reprodnc6on in any form reserved. ISSN: 07404X1%8 35

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students are to become self-sustaining and effective users of information sources and services, they need to understand various library uses. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which college students agree in interpreting the term library use. If there is a high degree of variation in how college students understand commonly used library words, then this finding would indicate to practicing ins~ctional librarians the importance of account~g for the problems our users have even with basic library uses and activities. It would also suggest to researchers to be particularly careful in wording library-related questions so that both non-users and infrequent library users can give clear responses with regard to their experiences to library uses. Before discussing the library use study, it is necessary to address the context in which this study was carried out. In the following, we will first discuss shifts that characterize the transitional nature of todays libraries, Tom the ~aditional library to the digital one; then the library use study will be discussed, and possible conclusions will be drawn.

THE CONTEXT OF STUDYING LIBRARY USE: WHY NOW? Traditional Model of Libraries We view libraries as agencies which have ~itionally been involved in selecting, acquiring, organizing, preserving, and providing access to documents on behalf of people who seek information. This traditional model sees the library with well-defined spatial and temporal attributes; with regard to space, the librarys documents are locally selected and organized for the purposes of information retrieval by library patrons; with regard to time, the documents are continuously, systematically, and pu~ose~lly collected into a single homogeneous library collection, con~~ing both archival and the most current items. The mediating library function has been traditionally achieved, in part, through multiple concurrent bibliographic filters such as various forms of reference service, bibliographies, and indexing and abstracting services. It has also been achieved by applying cataloging and classification procedures as explicated in well-established cataloging rules and expressed symbolically by means of names, title words, subject headings, and class numbers for the purposes of providing description of and subject access to each of the items in a collection. The result is a stream of document surrogates or meta-data in the form of catalog entries representing, through a selected set of features, the library items. Typical of these features are the name of a person or corporate body principally responsible for the creation of an intellectual or artistic content of a work, a title of an item, provenance of an artifact, scale and projection of a cartographic item, or topical characteristics of an item. So, if users know some of these features, they can search a library catalog to find potentially useful items in a coZZection. In order to search the catalog users must translate their information needs into a query language of a given library system. Problems which exist in representing or describing the contents of items from the perspective of cataloging and seeking are outside the scope of this article. Related to these issues are century old debates which hinge upon many research questions in information retrieval, classification theory, and information-seeking behavior. These have all contributed to the literatures of

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37

library and information science, communication and information seeking, and more recently, computer science (Bates, 1994; Belkin & Croft, 1992; Borko, 1964; Cognition and Software Development, 1995; Intelligent Agents, 1994; Coates, 1970; Dervin & Dewdney, 1986; Foskett, 1982; Garland, 1983; Harter, 1975a, 1975b; Lancaster, Cornell, Bishop, & McCowan, 1991; Lossee, 1993; Ogle & Stonebracker, 1995; Robertson, 1977; Salton & McGill, 1983; Sbera, 1973; Spark Jones, 1974; Turtle & Croft, 199 1; Van Rijsbergen, 1979). New Winds of Change The term library typically pertains to a cul~ec~~~ of do~~e~~ such as books, maps, audiovisuals, patents, mam~cripts, and computer files. Recently, this list has been extended to include museum artifacts, objects collected from nature, and scientific data generated from la~mto~ experiments. These collections may be represented anywhere from an inventory list and a local library catalog to a distributed multimedia system which user can remotely and in real-time read, visualize, model, and annotate. On one side of the spectrum is the libruty catalog with the traditional objectives to enable users to determine efficiently whether the library has the document they want by author and title entries; to reveal what works the library has by a given author under one form of authors name; which editions or translations the library has of a given work; and to assist the user in the subject access to library materials of which only the subject is known (Lubetzky, 1953). On the other side of the spectrum are rather crude retrieval mechanisms such as the World Wide Webs Alta Vista, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo. Most librarians agree that the library catalog, through its syndetic structure, described shortly, provides an intellectual access to, for example, all books written by Mark Twain, Angelous specific edition of IKnow why the Caged Bird Sings, a collection of technical reports produced by a research laboratory, or a base-map used for a topographic series. The syndetic structure of the catalog pertains to various types of linkages between and among biblio~phically-related items. Specifically, links bring together different forms of names (e.g., personal, corporate, conference, and series) and different editions or manifestations of a work. Some linkages control semantic and hierarchical relationships among subject headings, while others are between items which are in a part-whole relationship, and between items that are temporary linked (e.g., serial publications). Consider a search for all books by a given author, say Mark Twain, as well as writings by other authors who wrote about Twain and his work. When searching an online library catalog, the user would make a series of inte~elated searches against different catalog files, such as the name authority file, the file of bibliographic records, the file identifying holdings information, and another for borrowers transactions, For example, the name authority file is designed to bring together all Twains writings under one form of his name (e.g., Twain, Mark is the established name and linked to his real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (see Figure 1). The name search produces 185 heading groups with a total of 929 biblio~aphic records displayed consistently and systematically so that the searcher is ensured that all Twains writings will be found in one place, including all editions, translations,

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Ercegovac FIGURE 1 Name Authority Search in UCLAs ORION@ Online Library Catalog

Current Search: SEARCH:

bna &mans

Samuellangharne

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 1835-l 910 Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.

short stories, selected works, film and video adaptations, manuscripts, portraits, and literary criticism. 3~b~io~phi~ records, as the one shown in Figure 2, are designed to describe and identify (i.e., by means of a&or, title, edition statement, physical description, and publication data) as well as to provide subject access (i.e., by means of ass~~~g subject headings and class numbers) to library material. Other data, for example, show that this publication is physically located in a particular library and that it is not checked out. The result would be very different if the user compiled a comprehensive bibhography on Twain, his writings, and literary criticism on one of Internets search engines. These systems as yet are not designed to process directly a query correcatalogs do. In sponding to an onfme catalog name search in the way online libr an experiment on Digital Equipment Corporations Aha Vista7% which has an access to 8 billion words found in over 16 million Web pages, we performed a simple search on Mark Twain. The word count for the string samuel Clemens was about 600; for mark twain about 10,000. The principle of displaying the first best matches of about 3,000 could not be clearly ascertained. While todays ~st~buted digital repositories contain vast collections of different types of datasets and objects, they lack structure and collocation power which traditional library catalogs have. Some of these problems are being addressed by several research groups, and, among
FIGURE 2 Bibliographic Record with Holding and Status Information 1
Author: Title: Published: Description: Subject@): LIBRARY: URL status: Bliss, Walter. Twainiana notes from the annotations of Walter Bliss, Edited with an introduction by Frances M. Edwards. Hartford, Conn., The Hobby shop {cl930} 4 p. 1.,24 p. 20 cm. Twain, Mark, 1835-f 91~--6ibli~~phy. Call number: PS 1328 B61t Not Checked Out.

The4 Interpretations of L&my Use

39

them, investigators of Digital Library (DL) research projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their research in-progress has been reported under the headings of, for instance, indexing of distributed digital repositories, federating similar objects from different collections, searching and displaying desired objects from and across large collections (Digital Library Initiative, 1996). For discussion on the levels of biblio~p~c relatio~~ps in the context of traditional libraries, the reader is referred to ONeill & Vizine-Goetz (1989) and Tillett (1989). Todays online public access catalogs (OPACs) continue to extend traditional services and add sophisticated search and retrieval capabilities. Many OPACs have become gateways to remote library catalogs, Internet services, and providers of full-length periodical articles. The emerging model of library catalogs has shifted away from the biblio~ap~c description of local collection of documents to the represen~tion of virtual reposito~es of a variety of objects; and from s~ogate retrieval to information itself. The quest for effective methods to organize diverse virtual collections for the purposes of information retrieval has just begun. Libraries continue to scatter materials, typically by format and medium, across different locations; documents and document surrogates are also managed separately, and often implemented on different media. These two approaches are discussed from the perspective of traditional library practices under collection scattered and collection and catalog divided. Collection Scattered. Libraries have traditionally collected items in multiple formats (e.g., books, serials, maps, photographs, manuscripts, recorded interviews, and other audio-visual materials) and in a variety of media (e.g., print, microfilm, and CD-ROM). Library catalogs, while initially designed to provide access to book collections at the level of the entire item, have been gradually extended to integrate entries for books with entries for non-book collections. As used in this article, book refers to mono~aphic publica~ons such as reports, atlases, dissertations, and pamphlets. Non-book collections, include both graphical and textual items, such as maps, photographs, pieces of motion picture, music scores, and three-dimensional artifacts. While the notion of integrating cataloging entries for multiple formats in a single library catalog is not a new concept in American libraries, todays libraries continue to divide items on similar topics but in different formats and media across different library locations. For example, the entry representing a map (see Figure 3) and another for a book (see Figure 4) describe and identify two items which are on a similar subject: ~~spo~tion in the New York area. However, the library user, who wishes to retrieve documents on this subject matter, regardless of the bibliographic format, finds that these items are scattered in two different places. The transportation map is shelved with other maps in the map library (see Figure 3) and the book which discusses ~~~~tion issues in the New York area is physically located with other books in the main library (see Figure 41. The heterogenei~ among formats and media of library items is represented in integrated library catalogs, by means of integrating entries for different types of materials. In the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, a General Material Designa-

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Ercegovac FIGURE 3 Entry for a Map on Transportation-New York (from UCLAs ORION@)

Author: Title:

Geological Survey (U.S.) New York City and vicinity sanitation map: highways, railroads, canals, air lanes, and dredged channels/compiled and printed by the Geological Survey for the Bureau of Public Roads. Scale 1:125,000. Approx. 1 in. to 2 miles ; Modified poiyconic proj. (W 74030-- W 73015/N 41005--N 40030). {Washington, D.C.) : The Bureau, 1937. 1 map : coi. ; 58 x 84 cm. Trans~~ation--New MAP York (N.Y.)--Maps. Call number: G 3804 P2 125 PWA 1937

Scale: Published: Description: Subject(s): LIBRARY:

tion is a term indicating the broad class of material to which an item belongs (~~g~u-~~e~c~~ Cat&g&g Rufes, 1988, p. 618) and a Specific Material Designation is a term indicating the specific class of material (usually the class of physical objects) to which an item belongs (Anglo-A~ericu~ C~~~Z~~~~gRules, 1988, p. 623). Thus, catalogers may choose to select a term from a list of general material designations terms (e.g., map, chart, motion picture, music, model, sound recording) to indicate the broad class ofmaterial to which an item belongs. However, from the users perspective, especially in large libraries, one typically finds that

FIGURE 4 Entry for a Book on Transportation-New York Metropolitan Area (from ORION@) I
Author: Title: Pansini, Anthony J. The Northeast be dammed; resolving water, transportation and other public problems in the New York metropolitan-No~heast megapoiis area, by Anthony J. Pansini. Rosiyn Heights, N.Y., 1967 (cl 9681 1 v. (various pagings) iiius., facsims., maps, plans. 28 cm. Water resources development--New York Metropolitan Area. Water resources development--New England. Transportation--New York Metropolitan Area. Translation--New England. LIBRARY: SRLP Shelving number: D 000 228 772 0

Published: Description: Subject(s):

different data types are physically separated into different locations and often shelved by different arrangements. In summary, while library catalogs, through bibliographic entries at different levels of detail, support conceptual integration of heterogeneous library collections, libraries have physically scattered collections with regard to their format and medium. These issues are further described in Paradigm Shift 1, under Toward Integrated Media. Collection and Catalog Divided. Libraries continue to maintain physical collections of items separately from library catalogs or me&data which represent the contents of these items. Briefly, the library catalog as a separate entity from the collection it represents, has traditionally provided intellectual access to the individual items in response to users queries. However, different levels of cataloging detail in bibliographic entries range from minimal level cataloging which typically does not include subject access to the documents, to full records which include subject access. In the digital library (DL) environment, distinction between documents and document surrogates has become less well defined. Full records may include bibliographic descriptions, notes, abstracts, annotations, and, increasingly, full documents with pictorial and graphical material. In this env~o~ent, designers of DL have started to consider some of the questions which were, and still are, central to cataloging theory and practice. For example, which data elements should be included in the description of an item (e.g., a picture, an aerial map, a score, a collection of landsets, a collection of manuscripts)? What levels of description should be provided? The Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, concerns itself with the design of multiple user intertaces for large distributed collections of geo~p~cally referenced datasets (e.g., maps, satellite images, digitized aerial photo~aphs, gazetteers) and their meta-data. The ADLs catalog, in particular, uses both the United States Machine Readable Cataloging (USMARC) standard (Library of Congress, 1976) and the United States Federal Geographic Data Committee (USFGDC) meta-data standard (U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee, 1994). While USMARC standard was initially designed to describe mainly textual data and provide access to books via author, title, and subject access points, USFGDC facilitates description of and access to mainly graphical collections via spatial attributes and their relationships. Thus, USMARC with its complement USFGDC, seem to offer powerful data description model which is being used to represent heterogeneous data sets (Smith, 1996). Emerging library patterns are increasingly being assimilated into the traditional library model, described earlier. Toward New Working Assumptions. The five levels of change, identified below and summarized in Table 1, represent &ndamentally different philosophical underpinnings for organizing info~tion, gaining access to, seeking, and ultimately, using todays libraries from those during the age of pre-ubiquitous computer networking. These fimdamental changes characterizing the emerging library of the future are referred to in this paper as paradigm shifts. In contrast from what Kuhn (1970) observed in the natural sciences, the paradigms of the social sciences, and

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TABLE 1
Toward Digital Libraries

Paradigm Shifts Paradigm shift #1 : Toward integrated media

Traditional Libraries Centralized, local collection of mainly printed texts: increasing variety of other items scattered by their different formats and media Collections and library catalogs are two separate entities; they are collected, organized, and managed by different library units Highty structured, consistent, and uniform bibliographic representation of items in a given collection Access to information in the read-only mode

Digital Libraries Dist~b~ed virtual repositories of sarvers are providing access to heterogeneous datasets and multimedia Data (e.g., books, raw data, archival and museum objects) and metadata converge into a single medium No or little structure exists in indexing, standardization, and representation of heterogeneous datasets and virtual collections With the universal access to email and collaborative authoring, people ~ommuni~te remotely, interactively, and jnfo~ally Users individual differences and seeking behavior are little studied and understood

Paradigm shift #2: Data and meta-data converge

Paradigm shift #3: Toward information systems of virtual digital repositories

Paradigm shift #4: Expanded forms of informal communication

Paradigm shift #5: Toward heterogeneous endusers

Well studied and understood library user groups

indeed of library and information sciences, offer a variety of views and may gain or lose popularity, but they are seldom discarded entirely. Paradigm #I: Toward Integrated Media. The first paradigm shift refers to the practice of bringing together topically related items, which have traditionally been divided by format and medium, into integrated multimedia. While libraries continue to acquire items in multiple formats and media, they o&en scatter topically related items by their format and medium throughout various libraries. This practice which physically separates publications by their format (e.g., books, reports, maps, manuscripts, and audiovisuals) and medium (e.g., print, microfiche, and CD-ROM) into different locations has been influenced by various historical and management considerations. It could be argued that, from the user-centered perspective, the public would be served better if these different library materials, each requiring special treatment with regard to organization, preservation, and access, were located at different locations each of which designed to deal with special ch~cte~stics of, for example, books, maps, manuscripts, and audiovisuals. However, the obvious disadvantage of scattering topically related material by their format and medium, places the burden on people who need information regardless of their format and

The Interpretations of Library Use

43

medium. Within the traditional library paradigm, art scholars search multiple worldwide libraries including art and architecture, rare book collections, archives, and various specialized collections of music scores and sound recordings, all scattered by their format and medium. In contrast, digital libraries already have the capability to support fully integrated multimedia, video distribution, remote query to distributed databases, and interconnection to nationwide broad band networks. So, if users wish to explore certain aspects of renaissance music, they would see, in one place, a narrative about representative musicians of the Bureau music, pictures of the musical instruments and their authentic sounds, samples of Ockeghems work, a map depicting locations of Burgundian courts, mature musical forms of the era, and perhaps comparative works in visual and performing arts. Users might also want to browse music manuscripts of the great repositories as well as to compile a multi-lingual bibliography on the topic. Throughout this study, the researcher would have access to facsimiles by Ockeghems Collected Works edited by Dragan Plamenac. It is, however, too early to speculate on the possible level of friendliness in the emerging digital libraries. This author argues that the library, to be truly user-centered, must first address design questions, including indexing algorithms, interrelatedness of objects between and ~ongst different collections, syndetic structure, and authority control. Pur~i~ #2: IMa and ~~~u-d~~ Cunvmge. The second shift relates to the notion of bringing two traditionally separate library entities---collection and catalog-to a single locus. Library collection is typically a separate entity from the library catalog which represents its collection. However, as digital technology becomes more ~or~ble, digital libraries will contain both meta-~fo~tion as well as the full documents and raw data, all in one place. This change makes it possible for the user to access a work at different levels of detail. Using University of Californias ~EL~L~ as an example, it is already possible to obtain bibliographic and holding information on a certain serial title, to switch to an individual online database (e.g., mags and news), and then run a quick search to see specific titles of periodical articles, full bibliographic records, abstracts, and often full texts of particular magazine and newspaper articles. The third shift represents a Paradigm #3: Toward Information Sy&vns change from a library catalog which identifies and describes a continuo~ly growing local collection of documents toward a system which would represent a dis~ibuted, global set of world collections of heterogeneous objects. The notion of a collection from the perspective of digital libraries has taken on different meanings. Library catalogs have extended their boundaries beyond the traditionally well defined centralized collections of local material. While most online library catalogs continue to operate under well accepted cataloging theory and practice, many online library catalogs have added novel capabilities and offer connections to a variety of information services and systems (e.g., access to items in remote library catalogs and specialized databases; access to full-text technical reports, works in progress, forthcoming works, and experiments; and access to a host of distributed expertise

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and sonrces on the Internet). Are these, often called info~tion systems, to be regarded and evaluated within the traditional model of library catalogs? P~r~di~ #4: Expu~ded Fmns of ~o~~uni~~don. The fourth paradigm represents a shift toward a full range of informal forms of compilation. In the ~creas~gly online enviro~ent, users ~te~ction mode with info~ation resources has become more immediate and informal (Marchionini & Maurer, 1995; S~uelson, 1995). No longer are we satisfied with the access to doc~ent s~o~tes of published literature or to a table of contents; people have gained access to a wide range of less formal electronic sources of information including preprinted papers, works in progress, laboratory tools and ex~~rnen~, primary sources of artistic and intellectual nature? and so on. We converse and chat electronically, annotate and create do~~en~ in real-time, transfer files to and from remote locations, colfaborate remotely, seek advice from virtual consultants, learn in distant classrooms, and explore pictorial data and all-motion video from sites around the world via Internet-based protocols, Informal exchange of information will likely take on different characteristics as universal access to e-mail and other collaborative technologies (e.g., Common Gateway Interface; Application Program Interface) and groupware tools (e.g., Lotus Notes, from Lotus Development Corp., and Collabra Share, from Collabra Software, Inc.) become co~ercially available. Collectively, these te~~olo~es allow teams of collaborators to work in the many-to-many mode of communication, remotely, and inte~~tively. Speci~cally, the term ~oupw~e has been defined as tools that allow people to complete tasks together despite separations in space and time and despite variation in team size (Davenport & McKim, 1995). Paradigm #A Toward Heterogeneous End Users? The fifih paradigm shift represents a direction away from strongly mediated searching of library cataIogs and commercial retrieval systems toward increasingly end-user searching and exploration. ~fo~ation sources are directly searchable by users who are often infrequent, little trained or self-trained, and who continue to have serious difficulties with conceptual and mechanical problems in searching the online library catalogs and databases available on commercial retrieval systems (Borgman, 1989; Cognitive and Software Development, 1995). Unfo~nately, we have not seen, to date, large strides in making systems more robust, less forgiving, and more self-describing; nor have we seen much ~provement in the area of desiring well ~ons~cted instructional systems. At a time when traditional library models are starting to break and new ones are not yet well es~blished, we lack swell cons~c~ which we can use to teach people how to use a variety of information systems effectively. All these changes have opened up enormous access opportunities for library users. At the same time, however, these changes have created a host of design, policy, training, security, and copyright issues that developers of digital libraries need to consider. Most people agree that libraries continue to play ~~0~~ social, cultural, and educational roles in our society. However, the notion of a library as a store has been questioned. Librarys role as a service has been loosely defined. Eq~lly vague are definitions of access and organization of information as well as information itself

(Buckland, 199 1; Buckland & Liu, 1995). Searchers browse and query the worlds repositories interactively and remotely without ever having to leave their workplaces and communities. The traditional sense of a library as an agency with confined physical space and a store with fmite and local dimensions has disappeared and introduced ~b~~ties into the way people interpret library collections, uses and services. In tbe follo~ng~ we briefly discuss earlier work related to the library use study, report and discuss the library use study, and draw conclusions.

THJ3CASE STUDY
Related Work

Almost f&en years ago, before the concept of Global Information Infrastructure of the digital virtual libraries had been introduced, 3ookstein wrote an article titled Sources of error in library questionnaires (Bookstein, 1982). Booksteins findings suggest that the degree of variation in how people interpret even the simplest words such as library use, use/read book or journal, and adverbs of library use frequency (e.g., often and sometimes) is considerable. The fmdings are surprising, considering that Booksteins respondents were people designed to minimize this variabilitystudents enrolled in a rne~~olo~ course at the University of Chicago. While we do not know when the project took place, since it was based on a presentation in 1980, we believe tbe project was carried out in late 1970s. It is in the context of pre-Online Public Access Catalogs, pre-CD-ROM, and certainly pre-Infobahn era that we find Booksteins findings even more striking. With modifications, we wanted to replicate the experiment with different respondents at a different place, under a very different technological environment, and fifteen years later. In the context of todays libraries which combine the commitments that govern editions library theory and practice with the ~d~en~lly different capabilities of digital libraries, this study asks: what does it mean to use a library today when students query OPACs remotely from their dorms, and browse reference holdings and manuscripts of world famous repositories. We are not aware of any study which brings together in one article, the issues which characterize the transitional nature of todays Iibraries, and in that framework to examine the extent to which people differ in how they understand the word library use.

Tbe respondents in this study were undergraduates who enrolled in a college-level library course at the University of California, Los Angeles (n = 57) during tbe 1994-l 995 academic year. Students are library users with different levels of library experience; many of them are motivated to sharpen their research and library skills. The majority of the students are users of various types of information technologies, such as cable TV, electronic bulletin boards, online services including America Online, Compuserve, Genie, Prodigy, and online library catalogs. One characteristic however, which is shared by all students regardless of their background major, college status, level of library and computer experience, gender, age, and other

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demographic variables, is their lack of clarity regarding the terms they use to communicate various library activities, services, and processes. The students were asked to answer a one-page Library Use questionnaire. In an effort to gauge the key library uses, prior to administering the questionnaire proper, the questions on library use were pretested with over 20 undergraduates during the Spring term of 1994. The questio~~e was modified for use with library students and was also pretested prior to its administration. The modification was mainly in the use of the library jargon including such words as ready reference sources, OPACs, and bibliographic instruction, These were substituted with non-library terms including specific examples of ready reference sources such as dictionaries, whos who, and factbooks; the phrase computer library catalogs was used instead of OPACs, and library instruction was used in place of bibliographic inaction. The relatively high homogenei~ among students, having passed all UCLA and departmental entrance requ~ements, was an equally irn~~~t factor. The undergraduates are between 18 and 22 years of age, roughly divided by gender, ethnically diverse, and come from various disciplines in sciences, social sciences, and humanities; the are casual library users, and increasingly aggressive information technology users, many owning computers and modems (Ercegovac, 1995b). The questions in the Library Use questionnaire were divided into three important areas: library as a SPACE, library as a STORE, and library as a SERVICE. Questions that fall into the space category are: using a reading room as a place to study; using librarys equipment, such as copy machines, modems, terminals, CD-ROM workstations; and using facilities, including a restroom or a lounge to meet a friend. Questions that go under the store heading include: using librarys collections (e.g., CD-ROM databases, reference sources, reserve material, and microfilm collection) and browsing new publications and library stacks. Questions that go under the service category are: using various library instructional programs (e.g., printed guides and library ~s~ction), circulation transactions (e.g., checking out an item and retuming an item), requesting an ~terlib~ loan (ILL) of an item which a local library does not have, searching the library catalog, and asking a reference question, The questions were rearranged into a single sequence, the sequence of questions was reordered, and the three headings were deleted (see Table 2). The respondents were asked to answer each of the questions with yes or no. Table 2 gives the percentage of respondents describing activities as library use.
Results

With respect to the role of the library as a service, the respondents use the library to search library catalog (86%), check the spelling of an authors name in a catalog (66%), and to borrow/return a book to the library (60%). Surprisingly low was the use of various instructional services including the use of printed guides (34%), orientation and instructional sessions (510/o)), and the use of various reference desk services, such as asking a reference question (45%) and requesting an ILL (8%). A possible explanation for the low yes response to the question relating to the ILL service may be that students do not use this service because of the time lag between placing the ILL request and obtaining the actual item from another library; many students commented that they had not borrowed library material from another

The ln~~etat~s

of L&my Use

47

TABLE 2 Responses to Library Use Questionnaire Probing Interpretation of the Term Library Use

I USE LIBRARY TO:

1.

Percent Yes Percent No 76 72 51 30 20 59 65 86 12 8 69 58 45 88 63 34 : 67 73 61 27 24 28 49 70 80 41 35 14 88 92 31 42 55 34 37 66 26 70 33 27 39 73

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 6. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 16. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Check reference sources (e.g. dictionaries, factbooks, encyclopedias) Read reserve material Attend library orientation/instruction Read microfilm material Browse new publications Read a library owned magazine issue Read article referred to Search computer library catalog Hookup computer, write term paper Request inter-library loan Read/study own material (e.g., reader, textbook) Check out book Ask a reference question Check spelling of authors name in catalog Scan articles in electronic journals Obtain instructional guides, pathfinders Browse library stacks Go to restroom Search CD-ROM databases Duplicate known journal article Return book to library Meet friend

location because they had not had time to wait; when we informally asked them how many days they would be willing to wait, most of them said that they would wait up to 2 days. Another possible explanation for the reported low usage of ILL is that, while the term was explained in class, the students simply forgot what it means. With respect to the role of the library as a collection, the students use the library if they consult reference sources (76%), browse library stacks (74%), read reserve material (72%), search CD-ROM databases (67%) as well as electronic journal papers (63%). Certain library materials are particularly poorly used. Typical of such examples are reading ~cro~~ed items (30%~ and browsing new publications (20%). With regard to the role of the library as a space, students use the library to photocopy (73%) and study their own materials (69%). Apparently, the library is infrequently used as a place to meet a friend or to go to a restroom (27%, 30%, respectively). These low yes responses may be due to the students perception of the appropriate ways to use the library rather than their actual uses of the library. While the majority of respondents say that they use a library if they search the library catalog or consult reference sources (86% and 76% respectively), considerable confusion surrounded the activities of searching library catalogs and using reference sources. This observation was based on students answers to specific questions on the pre-test questionnaire and reported in Ercegovac (1995). Addition-

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Ercagovac

ally, some students commented that they seldom visit a regular library but they often search computer catalogs from their dorms and offrces. Others discovered a wide range of almanacs, directories, encyclopedias, and dictionaries first through the Internet and other online commercial services. Later, they were surprised to discover that many of these sources were available as printed books in their local and school libraries.

CONCLUSIONS This article started with a premise that there would be a certain degree of variation in the way college students, all of whom are library users at a major academic insti~tion, interpret library use. Several conclusions can be drawn from this studys fmdings. First, we are in the midst of a transition away from the locally-accessible library environment to an openly-accessible network environment. As this studys results suggest, we need to increase the awareness of various library services, programs, and activities so that our users can begin to take advantage of the many benefits a library can offer. The fact that college students, many of whom are seniors, are not aware of numerous library services, particularly in the area of instructional programs (e.g., the use of library printed guides, Biblio~aphic Ins~ction (BI) classes, and ILL), raises many concerns. This lack of awareness is striking especially now when many libraries are making strides to expand their instructional roles and become more dynamic and proactive collaborators with the faculty and students. The finding suggests that different forms of information literacy need to be incorporated early on in the learning process. Furthermore, library users need to be taught about traditional library services and resources as well as their electronic equivalents and underlining information technologies. Second, it is operative that researchers carefully o~rational~e p~icularly those terms and concepts that may mean different things to different people. For example, instead of asking broad questions pertaining to any of the library activities, it is more useful to specify a range of variables we wish to study. The questionnaire used in this study defines library use with 22 specific activities (see Table 2). While this may seem to be a general guideline for asking questions, to even a novice researcher, we want to emphasize the importance for carefully worded library-related questions for the following reasons. First, library terms and concepts are ob~ining new co~o~tions as a result of rapid technological advances. Both traditional and new meanings of the library use will probably exist side by side. Second, library- related terms are used by different disciplines with different connotations. For example, retrieval algorithms for online library catalogs with known populations are designed with very different philosophical underpinnings from commercial public access online retrieval systems typically used by heterogeneous users. Librarians, computer scientists, professionals in a wide range of disciplines, and the general public continue to access info~tion and develop their own meanings of the ~ditio~l library jargon. Finally, library users are becoming more heterogeneous and anonymous, less studied, and less understood. Traditional library use studies have typically been using survey questionnaires on college campuses and other library sites to collect data for analysis and interpretation. In

The Interpretations of library Use

49

order to study user info~tion seeking behavior in the distributed network environment, to which extent can we import methods used to examine OPAC searching patterns? Do researchers need to develop new methods to study user search behavior in these new en~ro~en~? What mode of observation is optimal in order to study increasingly heterogeneous user commuuity? Third, social research methods, in~lu~ng surveys, ex~~rneu~, and field research, often involve asking people for information. Based on the results obtained in this study, even among the group of people designed to rni~~e the degree of variation in the interpretation of library use, this term has varied meanings. In particular, the answers obtained from the non-library students are indicative of the definitional unclarity surrounding even the most common concepts such as a library, access to information, or library collections. People tend to have less problems with more traditional library uses such as using the library as a space to study, to read reserve material, to photocopy items, and to browse the library stacks. Moreserious problems are related to less traditional library uses and activities, most of which have been affected by various ~fo~ation tec~olo~es. The implication here is that questionnaire designers need to pay particular attention to those concepts that are influenced by the computer technology and networking and may have both traditional and new rne~~gs by different user populations.

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