How to Conduct an Effective Information Use Study

An information use study tells you what people actually do with the resources in a library or information centre, not what you assume they do. It reveals which journals get read, which databases sit unused, and how readers move between print shelves and online platforms. Done well, such a study turns guesswork into evidence that can shape collection budgets, service design, and staffing. This guide walks through the full process, from choosing which sources to study to presenting findings that decision-makers can act on.

Choosing the information sources to study 🔗

Every study begins with a clear scope. You cannot examine everything at once, so you decide which sources matter most for your users and your questions. The first major split is between non-electronic and electronic sources, because each demands a different data-gathering approach.

Non-electronic sources 🔗

These are the physical materials a reader handles directly: books, bound journals, theses, reports, maps, and reference volumes like encyclopaedias and dictionaries. Their use is harder to track because much of it happens inside the building and never appears in loan records. A reader can pull a journal from the rack, read an article, and reshelve it without any transaction being logged. Studies of academic libraries have repeatedly shown that in-house use accounts for a substantial share of total use, sometimes close to a third of all activity, which means relying on checkout data alone badly understates how a print collection performs.

Electronic sources 🔗

These include e-journals, online databases, institutional repositories, e-books, and subscription platforms. Their great advantage for a researcher is that they generate automatic logs. Every login, search, download, and full-text view can be recorded. This makes electronic use far easier to quantify than physical use, though the sheer volume of log data brings its own analysis challenges. When you study both kinds of sources together, you can compare them directly, for example by tracking how many users access e-journals versus print journals on the same subject.

Methods of study 🔗

No single method captures the whole picture. Quantitative methods such as questionnaires and citation analysis give you scale, while qualitative methods such as observation give you depth about why people behave as they do. Most strong studies combine two or more. The four methods below are the workhorses of information use research.

The dot-on-the-spine method 🔗

This is a clever, low-cost technique for measuring the in-house use of print materials that readers do not borrow. You place the books on a sampled set of shelves so their spines sit exactly aligned at the shelf edge, sometimes after marking each spine with a small dot or line. You ask readers, through a posted notice, not to reshelve books themselves. When someone removes a book to consult it and leaves it on a table, that gap or misaligned spine becomes visible during the count. By recording how many books have been disturbed over a fixed period, you estimate consultation that circulation records would otherwise miss. One academic study placed nearly 1,500 books with spines set precisely at the shelf edge so that any title touched during the sampling window stood out clearly. Researchers caution that even this approach can undercount use, since some readers reshelve books despite the signs.

Citation analysis 🔗

Citation analysis studies the references that authors cite in their own published work, such as theses, dissertations, and journal articles. By collecting and counting these references, you learn which journals, books, and authors a research community actually relies on. Citation analysis examines the impact and assumed quality of a work based on how often it is cited by others, and libraries have long used it as an unobtrusive way to assess whether their holdings match real scholarly demand. It is one of the most widely used techniques within bibliometrics, the statistical analysis of written publications. A typical project might gather reference lists from a department’s master’s theses, rank the most-cited journals, and check that ranking against the library’s subscriptions. The launch of free scholarly databases has made such analysis far more accessible to libraries without expensive proprietary subscriptions.

Observation 🔗

Observation means watching and recording how users behave with resources and spaces. It is useful for studying behaviour at the reference desk, the circulation counter, the periodicals area, and the catalogue. There are two broad styles. In participant observation, the investigator joins the group being studied and gains insight into the situation from the inside. In non-participant observation, the investigator watches closely without interacting, for instance by noting the pattern of reference questions at a desk. Repeated observation of the same situation increases the reliability and validity of the data. Observation captures what people genuinely do, which sometimes differs from what they report doing.

Questionnaire-based studies 🔗

The questionnaire is the most frequently used method in information use research because it can reach many users quickly. A questionnaire can combine both close-ended and open-ended questions, letting you gather countable data alongside richer comments. It works well for capturing user preferences, satisfaction levels, and self-reported habits across a large sample. Its main weakness is that it depends on honest, accurate recall, which is why pairing it with observation or log data strengthens a study.

Designing the questionnaire 🔗

A questionnaire is only as good as its design. Poorly framed questions produce data you cannot trust. Follow a structured sequence to build one that yields clean, analysable results.

Steps for framing the questions 🔗

Start by defining the objectives precisely. Decide exactly what you want to learn, such as the use of a specific journal, satisfaction with e-resources, or general information-seeking patterns. Clearly stating what the study aims to find out keeps every later question focused.

Next, identify your sample. You rarely survey an entire population, so choose a representative group using a clear sampling method such as random or stratified sampling. Then draft the questions, keeping each one short, specific, and free of jargon. Use closed questions, including multiple-choice and rating scales, where you need numbers you can count and rank, and reserve a few open questions for explanations and suggestions. Group related questions together and move from general to specific.

Finally, run a pilot test. Try the draft on a small group before full release. A small-scale pilot study tests your approach and exposes confusing wording, missing options, or questions that simply do not work, letting you fix them before you commit to the full survey.

Data collection and analysis 🔗

Once your instruments are ready, you collect the responses and turn them into meaningful results. How you organise the data depends on the scale of your study and the tools you have.

Organising the data 🔗

For a small study, manual tabulation on paper or a simple tally sheet may be enough. For anything larger, digital tools save enormous time and reduce errors. Spreadsheet software handles counting, sorting, and basic charts, while statistical packages support deeper analysis. Researchers studying student citation patterns have calculated bibliometric indicators in spreadsheet and statistical software and applied clustering in specialised programs, showing how layered the analysis can become.

Ranking and evaluation 🔗

The core analytical task is usually to rank sources by how heavily they are used, then evaluate that ranking against the collection. You might list journals from most to least cited, or databases from most to least accessed. This reveals the high-demand titles worth retaining and the low-use ones that may be candidates for cancellation. Use studies can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various library services, and ranked usage data is the evidence that makes such evaluation concrete rather than impressionistic.

Presenting the findings 🔗

Strong analysis is wasted if the results are hard to grasp. The goal of presentation is to make patterns visible at a glance so that librarians, administrators, and funders can act on them.

Use tables for precise figures, such as exact download counts or citation totals per journal. Use charts to show patterns: a bar chart ranks the most-used sources clearly, a pie chart shows how use splits between print and electronic resources, and a line graph tracks how use changes over time. Use infographics to summarise the headline findings for a wider, non-specialist audience who will not read the full report. Always pair every visual with a short written interpretation, since a chart shows what happened but the reader still needs you to explain what it means and what should change as a result.

What do you think? If you ran an information use study at your own institution, which method would you trust most for capturing the in-house use of print books that never get borrowed? And as more reading shifts online, do automatic usage logs make traditional methods like observation and the dot-on-the-spine technique obsolete, or do they still capture something the logs cannot?

References

1. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1171&context=lib_pub
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0099133320300604
3. https://guides.lib.umich.edu/citation
4. https://uj.ac.za.libguides.com/scienceresearch/bibliometrics
5. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/eblip/index.php/EBLIP/article/download/30493/22887/89812
6. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/lisp4/chapter/user-studies-users-education/
7. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/11357/1/Unit-10.pdf
8. https://www.lisquiz.com/2025/09/user-studies-methods-techniques.html
9. https://informationr.net/ir/22-1/colis/colis1622.html
10. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/lisp15/chapter/methods-and-techniques-of-use-studies-part-1/