A survey was conducted of adult patrons leaving 70 Illinois public libraries on 1 day in April 1983 to determine patrons' success in using the library that day, their level of library usage in the past year, and what changes, if any, they would like to see in their local libraries. Responses were received from 62 (89%) of the libraries in the…

Ten separate 1890 Land-Grant Universities and Tuskegee Institute cooperatively conducted a 10-state southern regional research project, "The Isolation of Factors Related to Patterns and Levels of Living in the Rural South," which elicited household and demographic data on 2,580 rural families. The 10 contiguous southeastern states which…

The first of two reports in this document details the use of a trial teletext service in residential Washington, D.C. during the second half of 1981. It is emphasized that caution must be exercised in interpreting the results since the trial was designed as a pilot with a sample of only 40 households. In addition, there were significant technical…

With grants from the Council on Library Resources (CLR) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), New York University (NYU) Libraries conducted a study to assess user reactions to their online catalog, Bobcat (Bobst Library Computerized Catalog). In order to evaluate the effectiveness of NYU's catalog, to describe users' attitudes toward…

Reports results of a survey of online catalog users in an academic library in Saudi Arabia that examined search patterns, levels of satisfaction, and user attitudes toward the online catalog. The special problems encountered when searching in a foreign language are discussed, and systems improvements are suggested. (CLB)

Discusses the use of optical disk technology in online searching and compares three versions of the ERIC database currently available on optical disk in terms of hardware requirements, ease of installation, scope and cost of the system, search procedures, displaying and printing results, and documentation and user support. (CLB)

This report describes a study designed to evaluate and compare the provision of National Technical Information Service (NTIS) documents to users of the McKinney Engineering Library at the University of Texas through Selected Research in Microfiche (SRIM), a standing-order, collection-building service, with the provision of documents through…

This report describes a survey of 942 California State University, Northridge, (CSUN) library patrons conducted from March 15 through April 15, 1987. The survey was administered by student interviewers who approached patrons exiting the two CSUN libraries and asked them questions from the survey questionnaire. Survey findings are briefly…

This study investigated four general areas of concern at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Library: (1) the characteristics of the library's present and future user population and the identification of its needs; (2) the role and program configuration of user education in the future; (3) methods for increasing user awareness of…

Describes and evaluates a project which examined the feasibility of converting the University of Illinois' ILLINET Online Union Catalog to optical format, allowing users across the state to search the database using microcomputers. The evaluation focused on the impact on interlibrary loans and on the reactions of librarians and users. (CLB)

This report describes a three-stage catalog use study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Stout from 1982 through 1986 to determine the types of searches conducted and search success rates for both the card and online catalogs during the library's transition to the DataPhase Automated Library Information System (ALIS). Phase I, conducted…

In 1981 and 1982, a group of 5 organizations conducted a coordinated study of public online catalog users and nonusers in 31 research, academic, community college, public, and governmental libraries with 17 different online catalogs. It was found that: (1) the most important user characteristic linked with success and satisfaction in using online…

This document reports in three volumes the results of a series of surveys designed to: (1) determine what contribution intermediary information transfer organizations such as libraries and information analysis centers make to the value of information; (2) assess the value of two somewhat different software information analysis centers and the…

This report was prepared as part of Mississippi's reporting requirements for Public Law 100-146, the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act Amendments of 1987. It contains the results of 300 in-person interviews determine their satisfaction with services. A descriptive analysis of the interviews is presented in six chapters…