Catching leopards in the library

Journal article

In a large research library are many materials which are being kept ‘for posterity’, that is, as part of the cultural heritage of the community. These materials are used infrequently, and some may never be consulted. The time-scale over which the materials are used may be very long. How can we begin to understand the patterns of use of this material, and define exactly what it means to keep something ‘for posterity’? The problem of estimating usage of cultural heritage material has a parallel in the problem of estimating how many animals of a given species exist in a specific region – how many leopards are there in the jungle? This paper adapts methods used in zoology to find an answer to this question, and applies them to analysing the rich and historic collections of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It enables us to calculate how long we need to monitor usage of special collections before we can be confident that we have identified how much is being kept for use and how much is being kept even though it may never be used.

Authors: Heaney, M

• Alternative title: Of panthers and posterity
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Not peer reviewed
• Publication date: 2009-06-01
• Edition: Author's Original
• Language: English
• Keywords: special collections; libraries; posterity; cultural heritage; usage statistics
• Subjects: Library & information science