The Methodology and Results of the Monteith Pilot Project

THISP A P E R REPORTS on only one of several aspects of the Monteith Pilot Project which has interest as an innovation in library research. Other aspects of the research will be covered in the final report to the Cooperative Research Program, which is now nearing comp1etion.l The one aspect to be discussed here, and discussed in some detail, is the analysis of the social structure in which the Project was carried on. Research in librarianship draws upon the methods and techniques developed in other fields and applies them to library problems. The Monteith research reported here uses the methods of anthropology and sociology. There is nothing new, of course, in the use of sociological methods in library research. The social survey technique, which is borrowed from sociology, has probably been used more than any other in the study of library problems. But the methods used in the sociological analysis of processes in a single institution have rarely been applied in library investigations. Such methods were clearly called for in the Monteith Pilot Project. The long-range goal of the Monteith Library Program is that of helping undergraduate students attain a high level of competence in the use of the library. In the pilot phase of our program we proposed to concern ourselves not with obtaining evidence on the validity of library competence as an objective of undergraduate education nor with the potential contribution of such competence to the achievement of other educational objectives. We were interested in learning what we could about library competence, about what it involves, about what we mean when we use the term. At this stage of our work, how-