COLLECTION PERCEPTION: THE EFFECT OF WEEDINGSarah Jones Cournoyer & Shannon Crawford BarniskisUniversity of Wisconsin Milwaukee School of Information Studies

The literature

Good live books are often lost or buried among dead ones. It has been shown by experiment again and again that a collection of best books, when grouped by themselves, receive twice as much use as when scattered among old and obsolete material. A library's shelves attract readers not in proportion to the number of volumes on them but in proportion to the amount of fresh and vital material which they contain. (Wynkoop 1911, p. 54)

Two collections examined

Hypothesis: A well-weeded collection satisfies patron expectation more than an unpruned collection, and acts as a public relations tool for the library. A weeded collection signals relevance and utility.

We used the juvenile science collection (DDC 500s) as a snapshot of the collection in general.

Collection size

The Beaver Dam juvenile science collection consists of 2493 items.

The Horicon collection contains 928 items.

Relevance to the user community Our definition of relevance:

current, factual, trustworthy and important.

User population between ages of 6-14

25% parents, 75% kids Random nonproportional sample Population & sample size

(Beaver Dam/Horicon) 1980/380, 100/50

Rate of response 9/26

Age of books

• The oldest item in the BD collection is from 1943. •The oldest item in Horicon collection is from 1985.

Age Statistics

HoriconBeaver Dam

Mean 1999.851 1996.258

Median 2000 1997

Mode 1999 2000

Range 24 66

IQR 10 11

Std. Dev. 6.13525 7.993744

T-test 1.38877E-34

User perception of age

Circulation as perception of value Although the service population is

smaller, holdings are smaller and the age range of the collection is narrower, the Horicon collection circulates more books to fewer people.

BD science circ: 44418 Horicon science circ: 5835 BD science circ per capita 0.74 Horicon science circ per capita 0.98

Collection Perception: Trustworthiness

Collection Perception: Currency

Collection Perception: Importance

User perception of overall attractiveness

Used before/will use

Conclusion

This pilot study reported indications of use and perception that do seem to support the hypothesis.

There are so many uncontrolled variables that we can state no conclusive findings.

Long range trend studies are needed to measure perception of the collection before/after/during weeding process.