Print Book Circulation Longevity Dropping at a Small Canadian University Library
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A Review of: Belvadi, M. (2021). Longevity of print book use at a small public university: A 30-year longitudinal study. Insights, 34(1), 26. http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.562 Abstract Objective – To inform future collecting decisions by ascertaining the circulation longevity of print books within an academic library. Design – Longitudinal data analysis of two circulation datasets. Setting – Library catalogue of a small public university in Canada. Subjects – 10,002 print books acquired between 1991 and 1996 with a first circulation year between 1991 and 2000 (part 1); 4,060 print books acquired and with a first circulation year between 2008 and 2011 (part 2A); 35,860 print books acquired since 1991 with a first circulation year between 2008 and 2011 (parts 2B). Methods – The researcher established two datasets by selecting books with viable circulation data from the institution’s holdings. Using each book’s Library of Congress classification number, the researcher mapped each book to three other categorization schemes. The first scheme, Becher-Biglan typology, categorizes books as belonging to either applied or hard and pure or soft fields of study. The second scheme, called in the paper “major subjects,” uses a traditional broad subject categorization (e.g. arts, sciences, health, etc.), and the third scheme categorizes books by the academic programs at the researcher’s institution. The researcher then analyzed the circulation data through the lens of these three categorization schemes. Main Results – Part 1, which considered the collection’s older circulated books, found that books had an average circulation longevity of 10 years. About 14% of books circulated for only one year, and about 24% of books circulated for less than five years. Among the newer books considered in Part 2, 37% circulated for just one year and 64% had a circulation longevity of four years. Conclusion – Books in applied and hard fields generally have greater longevity compared to pure and soft fields. Books in professional and STEM fields generally have greater longevity than books in the humanities and arts, contrary to conventional library wisdom. Print book circulation longevity appears to be dropping. Subscription and on-demand acquisitions options may prove to be a more efficacious use of resources than ‘just-in-case’ print collecting.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.025 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".