Conference Paper: “Something is Lost, Something is Found: Book Use at the Library Shelves”

The following paper was presented earlier this year at the Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR 2017), Oslo, Norway,  March 7-11, 2017.
Title
Something is Lost, Something is Found: Book Use at the Library Shelves
Authors
George Buchanan
University of Melbourne
Dana McKay
Swinburne University of Technology Library
Source
Swinburne Research Bank
Swinburne, Australia
Abstract

This paper investigates the life of books on physical library shelves. Most existing data on the use of library books uses logs to quantify loans, or user interviews to obtain insights into their use. We deploy a new specialised technique, photographing library shelves systematically over a week-long period, and noting changes to the positions of individual books, and movement over each shelf as a whole. Through this indirect observation, we demonstrate the use of shelved books within, rather than on leaving, the library.
We reveal the first insight into within-library book use, and demonstrate that in-library use appears to be more common and over a longer period than previous research suggests. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Direct to Full Text Paper (10 pages; PDF)

Filed under: Data Files, Interviews, Journal Articles, Libraries, News