by Dave Baldwin
Daily Lobo Guest Columnist
Have you noticed that it's easier to find your books on the shelves in Zimmerman lately?
For the past two years, the General Library at UNM, along with 160 other North American academic libraries, participated in a web-based survey called LibQUAL+. This research and development project is intended to measure service quality in libraries. The LibQUAL+ survey asks faculty and students to rate both the quality and importance of a broad range of library services.
In one of the most recent portions of the survey, respondents told the library that they were having difficulty finding books on the shelves! After we ran some shelf-reading tests by checking the call-number order of books on selected shelves, we confirmed that there was definitely reason for concern.
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As a result, the library's administration approved a sweeping project of shelf reading in Zimmerman Library's second and third floor book collections. All of the librarians and staff were asked to assist in assuring that the books were arranged in order, as well as identifying items that didn't belong where they were found. On the second and third floors of Zimmerman Library, books are arranged on approximately 29,000 shelves. Between July and December 2002, librarians and staff inventoried or verified the order of the books on approximately 24,000 (83 percent) of those shelves. The remainder will be reviewed in the coming months. We found that some books were out of order and other books had call number errors.
We are pleased that all of the identified problems have now been corrected by the circulation and cataloging staff of the library. This project helps to assure that when an individual finds a book title in the online catalog, that book can be found on the shelf.
Another benefit of the project is that many more library users are checking out a greater number of books.
The number of book checkouts in Zimmerman Library had decreased by six percent from 2000 to 2001. Undoubtedly this decrease reflects that more library users are finding full-text articles and electronic books online, as well as using the UNMGL Electronic/Online Course Reserves that the General Library initiated in August. During the first six months of 2002, the number of books checked out increased by only .5 percent, but during the next six months checkouts increased by seven percent. This reverses a trend seen in almost all university libraries. It can be attributed not only to shelf reading but also to improved signs and the addition of catalog records in the database for a large collection of Dewey Decimal classified books acquired before 1975, and which could only be found in the card catalog.
The greatest benefit of this project is that the ability to find a book has been improved -- library users are better able to find books in Zimmerman Library where they should be -- on the shelves. (But should you still have any difficulty please be sure and let us know.) The Zimmerman Library Shelf Reading Project has been a huge success, thanks to the students who told us what they needed and all of the librarians and staff of the General Library.
Dave Baldwin is the director of Zimmerman Library.
