Abstract

In a situation with reducing numbers of students and local universities in crisis, this study aims to analyze collection and loan usage data in small-sized university libraries and present evidence for guiding their collection development policy. The data was collected from Rinfo from 2010 to 2022 regarding the numbers of enrolled students, collected books, book loans, and electronic resources and compared the average values of entire 4-year university libraries to those of small-sized ones by year and region. Results show that while the numbers of enrolled students and book loans have decreased in both of groups, the number of collected books has increased 30% more in small groups and the amount of electronic resource use has increased enormously as well. Correlation analysis presents that both of groups have the consistent result. It is suggested that small-sized university libraries should highly increase their budget ratio to electronic resources for collection development and build a consortium by university’s speciality for mutual use of electronic resources.