Last year, only four books were borrowed by college students from the school library for a year. It has fallen to half the level in 10 years from the 8.3 volume in 2011.
The Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS) released the ‘2020 University Library Statistical Survey Results’ on the 7th. This is the result of analyzing changes over the past two months from June of last year to the end of July by investigating the collections of 433 university libraries nationwide, the status of library use, and material purchase costs.
The average number of loans per college student decreased from 8.3 in 2011 to 4.0 in 2020. The biggest cause is interpreted as a change in the’information use type’. “Students started using e-books instead of printed books,” KERIS analyzed. “The use of electronic and video materials during lectures also had an impact.”
In fact, in the case of’the number of commercial databases used per enrolled student’, which shows the use of electronic data, from 130.8 cases in 2011 to 253.7 cases in 2020, it has approximately doubled. During this period, the number of university students steadily declined, but the number of participants in the library’s electronic material user education increased by about 30% from 271,081 to 353,339.
The way university libraries operate has also changed. The’material purchase cost per enrolled student’ divided by the number of students in the library did not differ significantly from 96,000 won in 2011 to 105,250 won last year. It increased by about 51% to 39.32 million won, and the percentage of electronic data purchases in the total data purchase cost increased from 49% to 69%. KERIS said, “The form of use of university libraries is rapidly changing to electronic data.”
Yunjoo Lee reporter [email protected]
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