AZ EGYETEMI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVEI 4. (Budapest, 1968)

Könyvtári gyakorlat - Déri Miklósné: Catalogue use in the University Library (Summary)

The class of informational sources which most readers relied on, were the lists students are provided with in university courses; they formed a little more than one-third of all cases. Verbal sources were referred to in a quarter of all instances. The book was known, already used before, by onefifth of the patrons. Very small was the number of written sources other than the above mentioned lists of literature (e. g. bibliographies, abstracting journals). 95 per cents of the questioned users of the authortitle catalogue looked for known-items. It was one of our most interesting findings that readers seek browsingly: if wanting a particular work of an author, they browse among the entries relating to this author, instead of heading directly for the exact alphabetical place of the corresponding entry. Because of the small number of the cases examined we could not draw any quantitative conclusions as to the use of the different sorts of catalogue entries, except the only point that the use of added entries, increases with the qualification of the user. For the users of the subject catalogue it is characteristic that they look usually but in a single place for the literature they need. Most of the users looked for subjects in the fields of literature, history, art history, biography and biology. Factors determining subject item selection were: linguistic limitation, connotation of title, date of publication, and authors' personality. The examination has, finally, revealed that although the users' familiarity with the catalogues does influence the extent of their turning to the staff for assistance, the decisive factor determining this extent is nevertheless, the contingency whether or not there is a librarian at the catalogue when the reader happens to want an information. 24