Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses
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ItemState teachers college libraries in four Australian states in 1972: a comparative survey( 1975)In 1972 a comparative survey of State teachers college libraries was made to ascertain their general adequacy as service facilities supporting tertiary education courses, aimed at the pre-service education of teachers. The survey involved a visit to most of the institutions under consideration, followed by the sending of two questionnaires, the purpose of which was to gain information of both an objective and subjective nature, relating to components of service, commonly thought to contribute to a concept of general adequacy of library service. The components which were investigated included such items as book collection size; ratio of library staff to the number of students in the institution; the number of current serials titles; as well as other facets of library service. The aim of the survey was to obtain a broad comparison of adequacy in a number of such components between colleges as individual institutions; between States as collective groups of colleges; and between tertiary institutions on an Australia-wide basis, on the question of library services. The thesis behind the project was that teachers college libraries would be found to be generally inadequate in most areas of library service and provision, when compared either with standards of provision such as the "Draft standards for libraries in colleges of advanced education" or with other libraries in alternative tertiary institutions, such as the universities and colleges of advanced education, in the same four States, Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland. In the event, the thesis appeared to have been proved in most respects, when comparing individual components of library service and provision and when considering a composite concept of adequacy, gained by combining scores from a consideration of individual components of such a concept. What was unexpected was the indication that teachers colleges were often better off than colleges of advanced education in facets of library adequacy. The conclusion was that colleges of advanced education, as a group, were in need of improvement, when compared with universities, in all quantitative facets of library adequacy chosen for consideration in 1972, and that the teachers college libraries were also seriously deficient in the qualitative factors chosen for consideration.