The relationship between subject headings for works of fiction and circulation in an academic library

Enriching user‐oriented class associations for library classification schemes

“…The bulk of previous works on the analysis of library circulation logs have focused on collection management with various purposes in mind, for example, to learn more about how the reading patterns of user groups can help libraries focus their services (Bertland, 1991), to assess how particular resources can be used to make decisions about collection development (Eldredge, 1998), and to measure the usage of collections to create predictive models of shelf arrangement (Barr and Sichel, 1991). Other studies have investigated how subject analysis can be used to increase usage of collections (Wilson and Spillane, 2000).…”

Electronic Databases for Readers’ Advisory Services and Intellectual Access to Translated Fiction Not Originally Written in English

“…Yet, as Gunnar Knutson reported about a study conducted at an academic library in Illinois, the circulation frequency of social science essay collections with additional subject headings was greater (although not statistically significantly so) than the circulation frequency of titles without such enhanced subject headings: "by three different measures of local circulation, the subject-enhanced records accounted for about half of all use even though they represented only a third of the books" (Knutson 1991, 77). In addition, (Mary Dabney Wilson et al 2000), studying whether an increase in the number of subject headings assigned to fiction titles increases the circulation of those titles at an academic library in Texas, found intriguing (although not statistically significant) evidence that a small set of books with 7 assigned subject headings had, on average, 4.69 circulations per item in the period 1994 to 1998, while titles with fewer subject headings had between 2 and 3 circulations per item in the same period. Accordingly, there is some evidence that an increase in the number of subject headings plays a role in increasing the circulation statistics for both fiction and nonfiction titles.…”

Fiction Core Collection (16th edition)

“…Because cataloguing fiction is a relatively recent practice (Wilson et al , 2000), anything that helps the reader or collection developer find core fiction titles is helpful. The title/subject index to this 1,300‐page book is almost 300 pages.…”