The demand of scientific articles in the University Library of Cuenca (University of Castilla – La Mancha), 2000-2003

Abstract

The analysis of requests for scientific articles from document supply services at libraries may help to understand the information needs of their users and would be necessary to develop new policies and to take decissions in order to improve their services. This paper studies the item requests managed by the University of Castilla – La Mancha main library, in Cuenca, from 2000 to 2003. The interlending and document supply service of this library manages requests made by users (students, professors, researchers, PAS and externals) and by other libraries. To manage this demand, the service uses since 2000 a specific Spanish software implemented in most of Spanish university libraries, Gtbib-SOD, which was the resource to obtain the data for this research. The title of the journal, publication country, topic, publication date and type of user who ordered each request were considered. With this information a data base in Access was created; each record was composed of data from both the bibliographic record in Gtbib and controlled information such as the subject, country and kind of user. All statistical results were obtained from the analysis of the distribution by subject of the requests managed, the distribution by subject of the journals needed to satisfy the demand, the distribution of the requests by publication country, the study of the obsolescence —using the half life indicator and the Price index—, journals more frequently requested and customers typology and behaviour. Afurther analysis shows the demand of scientific articles, who requests these documents, how old is the literature that is being used, what articles are requested, in which disciplines and from which journals.