THE USE OF SERIALS AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY LENDING DIVISION IN 1980

A sample of 66,430 serial requests received at the Lending Division over a two‐week period in May 1980 was examined, and details of satisfaction, subject, date of publication, type of requesting organization, method of transmission to the Lending Division and where possible the Division's serial shelf mark, were recorded from each request form. The type of issue and the country of origin of each request were also recorded. Results show that a quite limited core collection of serials can satisfy a high proportion of demand. Only 10% of titles requested were necessary to satisfy 50% of demand. However, concentration of demand on titles had dropped since 1975 when a similar survey took place. Analysis by subject reveals that the concentration is higher for science than social sciences, and higher for social sciences than for the humanities. Therefore, a smaller proportion of titles requested in science is required to satisfy demand than in the social sciences or humanities. Lists of titles in rank order of use have been produced from both the 1980 and 1975 surveys. The amount of overlap between the top titles on each list is not great, and decreases as the number of titles increases. Of the top 5,000 titles on each list, only 2,591 (52%) are common to both lists. This inconsistency of rank lists over time sheds doubt on the continuing value of core lists of serials, which might decrease substantially in validity over a relatively short period.