Reexamining Content-Enriched Access: Its Effect on Usage and Discovery

Yuji Tosaka is Cataloging/Metadata Librarian and Cathy Weng is Head of Cataloging at The College of New Jersey Library; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]. We would like to thank Jeffrey Weng for his editorial assistance and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. © Yuji Tosaka and Cathy Weng Content-enriched metadata in bibliographic records is considered helpful to library users in identifying and selecting library materials for their needs. The paper presents a study, using circulation data from a medium-sized academic library, of the effect of content-enriched records on library materials usage. The study also examines OPAC search transactions of circulated items to learn how enriched metadata is used. The findings show that enhanced records were overall associated with higher circulation rates and that keyword search was the most frequently used search option directly associated with circulation.