Revisiting the Landscape of Literatures: Replication and Change in the Use of Subject Collections

Paul Metz is Collection Management Assistant to the Dean for Special Projects at Virginia Tech; e-mail: [email protected]. The author wishes to thank Eileen Hitchingham, Dean of Libraries, for her gracious suggestion that he revisit the “who uses what?” question and Debbie Averhart and Barbara Moore of the library staff for their assistance in gathering and organizing the data. Circulation data from the Virginia Tech Libraries were analyzed to determine the extent of continuity or change between the author’s study of the use of subject collections in 1982 and the present. Book circulation has declined, largely due to much less use by undergraduates. The overall profile of subject use has changed in ways traceable to changes in the population of active library users. Disciplinary groups who still rely on library monographs do so in ways strikingly similar to their behavior in 1982, and the findings strongly replicate the earlier findings that were most suggestive for library practice and the sociology of knowledge.