Library usage and demographic characteristics of undergraduate students in a UK university IntroductionIn 2011, the Library Impact Data Project presented its initial findings to the 9th Northumbria international conference on performance measurement in libraries and information services . This work demonstrated that there is a statistically significant relationship across a number of universities between library activity data and student attainment. Since then the project has received further funding from Jisc to dig deeper into the data. This paper investigates the hypothesis that there is a relationship between demographic characteristics -e.g. age, gender and ethnicity -and undergraduates' (1) use of academic libraries. The paper will outline the methodology of the research and present findings that show that there is a statistically significant difference, although in some cases very small, between age groups, gender, ethnicity and country of origin. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and recommendations for further study, including focus groups with low/non users in order to find possible causes for the relationship that we have identified. Literature reviewRecent literature reviews looking into library usage and undergraduate attainment have found little evidence of research until the last few years (Cox and Jantti, 2012, Stone and. Stone and Ramsden reported that much of the current research has been around school library resources (Farmer, 2006, Ontario Library Association, 2006. There have been a number of recent studies looking at academic library value and researchers (Auckland, 2012, Oakleaf, 2010. These studies have tended to look at the 'bigger picture' and have not attempted to look at possible relationships between usage and demographic characteristics.Exploring and quantifying the social impact of libraries, the 'value for the individual' as Poll and Payne describe it (2006, p.554) is a complex challenge, and usually involves segmenting users and potential users in various ways, including using demographic characteristics. The question is usually investigated using techniques such as interviews, surveys and focus groups, all of which allow the researcher to establish the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. Projects such as this have often been carried out in the public library sector and have looked at topics such as social inclusion and use of services by certain groups in the community (Bohme and Siller, 1999, Debono, 2002, Linly and Usherwood, 1998, Suaiden, 2003. However, in a review of the literature on use and non-use of public libraries, Sin and Kim (2008) state that, '[w]hilst research on public library use/nonuse has expanded in the past decades, the relationship between different variables and public library use/non-use still appears inconclusive. In addition to the dearth of study testing the supply-side variables, studies concerning user-side variables have generated conflicting findings.' Sin and Kim go on to argue that this is to be partly attri...

2014 Collins and Stone. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -To test whether routinely-generated library usage data could be linked with information about students to understand patterns of library use among students from different disciplines at the University of Huddersfield. This information is important for librarians seeking to demonstrate the value of the library, and to ensure that they are providing services which meet user needs. The study seeks to join two strands of library user research which until now have been kept rather separate -an interest in disciplinary differences in usage, and a methodology which involves large-scale routinely-generated data.Methods -The study uses anonymized data about individual students derived from two sources: routinely-generated data on various dimensions of physical and electronic library resource usage, and information from the student registry on the course studied by each student. Courses were aggregated at a subject and then disciplinary level. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney tests were Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2014, 9.3 52 used to identify statistically significant differences between the high-level disciplinary groups, and within each disciplinary group at the subject level.

Exploring the possibilities and feasibility of open access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences (HSS), OAPEN-UK presents some initial findings from its benchmarking survey with the projects' authors, publishers and members of the steering group. The survey explores their awareness of and attitudes towards open access, their motivations for publishing and priorities in scholarly communication.

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