Activities within a library are combined with the library's floor plan to develop a model of the library as a network of queues. This model can be used to predict average patron processing times and costs as they are affected by demand characteristics and floor plan variations. (Author/FM)

Discusses the purpose of mathematical models and reviews the phases of the modeling process--defining performance, representing the problem, predicting performance, estimating parameters, defining optimization criterion, determining solution, and implementing results. Reviews of book-use, resource allocation, and library network models are…

A research project sponsored by the Illinois State Library had two goals: to develop a set of mathematical models suitable for predicting the impact of alternative library network policies on network preformance, and to demonstrate through series of case studies that the methodology developed could feasibly be applied to real library networking…