Using Statistical Modeling for Collection Development at the Library of the College of Engineering of Nanjing Agricultural University

ABSTRACT

This paper selected the library of the College of Engineering, Nanjing Agricultural University as a subject and then surveyed four groups of samples: new-book replica rate, book-use rate, book-borrowed number, and number of books in the collection. Results were obtained by inspecting these data via the statistical methods of correlation and regression analyses, and two relationships were found: 1) the quadratic curve between the new-book replica rate and book-use rate; and 2) the power equation between the book-borrowed number and the number of books in the collection. Finally, after the new-book replica rate and the number of books in the collection were compared and predicted, respectively, this paper formulates a reasonable strategy for the library’s hard-copy book purchase procedure. It would be helpful for the librarians who are interested in document resource developing or purchase of hard-copy books; however, this paper provides a method specific to engineering colleges. There are certain limitations in this paper, such as, the timespan of the four-group sample data is only one year.

KEYWORDS:

• Hard-copy book
• strategy
• statistical analysis
• new-book replica rate
• book-borrowed number

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by Social science funds of Jiangsu province(CN) 17SYC-117, 18SWC-30; Foundmental research funds for the central universities(CN) KYGL201705, SKGL2017014；Educational information funds of Jiangsu Province (CN), 20180033, and Funds of Library Society of Jiangsu province in China, 17YB07.