The purpose of this investigation was to explore the service orientation of government documents librarians in academic libraries. A researcher-designed questionnaire, sent to 298 staff members of the 151 academic federal depository libraries of the Southeast, had a return rate of 76 percent. It sought to measure the service orientation of government documents librarians on four different scales: actual, ideal, user, and resource, as related to selected demographic and environmental variables. It also sought to determine whether or not a significant difference exists between the actual and ideal service perceptions of government documents librarians and whether or not government documents librarians are more user service oriented than non-librarian support staff. / Factor analysis was employed to revise the scales of questionnaire items used. Responses to the revised scales were analyzed through mean scores, percentages, Pearson correlation, and t-tests. / Four scales were correlated with five personal characteristics of librarians and eight characteristics of the work environment. The following variables showed significant correlations with the scales indicated: age/ACTUAL; sex/IDEAL; educational background/ACTUAL, IDEAL, USER; professional activities/IDEAL; prior occupational activities/IDEAL; size of collection/ACTUAL, IDEAL, USER; bibliographic access/ACTUAL, USER, RESOURCE; percentage of FTE time spent working with government documents/ACTUAL, IDEAL, USER; percentage of FTE/USER, ACTUAL; classification scheme used/IDEAL, USER, RESOURCE; publicity/IDEAL, USER; and circulation policy/USER, RESOURCE. User service orientation had the highest number of significant correlations with both personal and environmental characteristics. Environmental characteristics indicated the strongest relationship to service orientation of documents librarians. Findings indicated documents librarians to be more interested in the delivery system to the user in library service than in the resource base of service. / A significant difference exists between the actual and ideal perceptions of government documents librarians who felt a need for improvement from practical to ideal applications. / Government documents librarians may be slightly more user service oriented than non-librarian support staff, who are slightly more resource oriented, but results are not significant and therefore inconclusive. The results of the current study indicate a positive perception of service on the part of government documents librarians. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-11, Section: A, page: 3232. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75446 |
| Contributors | WILLIAMS, LAUREN SAPP., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 184 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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