Survey of Catalogue Use Prior to Mechanisation

The use of MARC and development of computer catalogue files highlights the question of the form that existing catalogues should have alongside future computer produced catalogues. Introduction of new catalogues will present users with the problem of searching two catalogues. A survey was carried out to investigate the accuracy of users bibliographic references in terms of dates of publication and to gather information as to the potential continuing use of an existing catalogue in the University library. Results show that users have a poor knowledge of the dates of publication of the items they are searching for, and that the pattern of search in the current catalogue is for older published material.