Table 34. How UK Academic Staff Respondents Initially Become Aware of Books Frequency Found while browsing 61 Found while searching 218 Found through citation in another 106 publication. Another person told me about it 262 Promotional email or web advert 34 Don’t know or don’t remember 54 Other (197) Already owned or knew 73 For review or was a 38 contributor/co-author Others 86 Total 932
Percent 6.5 23.4 11.4 28.1 3.6 5.8 (21.1) 7.8 4.1 9.2 100.0
Twenty-eight percent of book readings are found through another person, including a colleague, and approximately a quarter (23%) of the readings are found through searching. Citations in other publications account for 11% of the book readings, and almost 7% of book readings are found through browsing without a specific object in mind. Many respondents had previously read the book, owned a copy, or considered the book a core text in the field (8%, 73 of 932). Many of the respondents considered the book “key element in personal library over many years,” a “key reference volume,” or a “major text book in the field.” We assume, therefore, many of the readings are re-readings. Even though we did not ask the respondents for the year of publication or if they knew the information in the book prior to reading, we expect the average year of publication would be older and more respondents would know all or parts of the book prior to reading than with article readings. Excluding two outliers, the average time to become aware of a book is twelve minutes (M=11.71, SD=22.13).49 The total time to become aware of a book ranges from less than a minute to over three hours. Readings found by browsing or searching require more time than readings found
49
Including outliers the mean is 19.34. 63
UK Scholarly Reading and the Value of Library Resources—2011