Optimal loan periods for undergraduate recommended reading

A Review of Some Modelling Approaches to the Loan and Duplication of Academic Texts

“…In order to assess the utility that users derive from the library copies of a text, Warwick and Taylor (1981) suggested a simple model of user borrowing which allowed the calculation of the total utility a group of students would derive from the library copies of a text. The model dealt with recommended reading only, and suggested a simple categorization of books based on the timespan of relevance of the book.…”

Duplication of texts in academic libraries: a behavioural model for library management

“…The latter is important since recommendations to read other books during this waiting period and the distancing of the original recommendation from the time the book actually becomes available would reduce the motivation of the user to read and derive value from it. The mathematical formulation of this model of user utility may be found in an article by Warwick and Taylor (15). User borrowing behaviour In order to be able to model the total user utility gained by a group of students from a book recommended to them it was necessary to construct a model of user behaviour in response to a recommendation.…”

“…This particular model has been described in terms of an aid to duplication policy but clearly the general framework and the notion of user utility make it a suitable vehicle for examining the effects of decision making in many areas of library management (15).…”