A COMPARATIVE APPROACH TO ASSESSING THE PERFORMANCE OF A SHORT-LOAN COLLECTION

Librarians in academic libraries face many problems when attempting to make cost effective provision of recommended reading for students. Mo reover, the diversity of academic institutions and academic discipline s impedes comparison between libraries. However, within a single insti tution, quality of provision can be monitored by the use of internal c omparisons. Reviews measures of performance and patterns of student ac tivity and assesses the provision of recommended reading for two group s of undergraduate students enrolled on similar courses by comparing t heir recorded utilization of short-loan books. The assessment is corro borated with statistics of use, distributions of user activity and the results of a user survey. By comparing performance indicators for the utilization of the collection by these two groups of students with si milar library requiements, systematic differences in the provision and uptake of recommended titles are distinguished from the general uneve nness in demand which is common to both groups and well known in libra ries.