A statistical analysis of a college library

Abstract

IN THE early American college libraries, books were guarded with great diligence. In fact, many of them were kept on the shelves under lock and key. This is what is known as the rare book tradition where the accent was on custodianship rather than usage. From about 1880 on, however, the trend was toward free access to the shelves as more and more college and university libraries permitted their students to enter the stacks and examine the books as they were displayed on the shelves. This practice of open shelves, as it is called, was never universally accepted and today perhaps only half the colleges of the United States permit students free access to the library stacks. In the Joint University Libraries of Nashville, Tennessee the unusual condition prevails of both open and closed shelves in the two largest libraries of the system. The Central Division has the policy of closed stacks for practically all-the exceptions being graduate students and professors. On the other hand, the library of George Peabody College for Teachers has the system of open shelves for all users, a system which goes back to 1933 when this library adopted this policy. No study, as far as can be determined, has been made to evaluate this library of Peabody College in terms of some of the results of this accessibility to the book collection or to measure certain other aspects of its service and book collection.