Library and Information Science

The objectives of this study are to evaluate the characteristics of the reference collections in university libraries and to prepare a list of basic reference books as a tool for reference co11ection development. ’For these purposes, three university libraries, the International Christian University Library, the University of Tokyo General Library, and the Keio University Mita Information Center, were selected, and quantitative analyses were made of foreign reference materials in these libraries, as of March 1982.

This paper consists of three parts. In the first part, the refernce materials are devided into two,categories, non-serials and serials, and the following aspects were examined; type of reference materials; subject fields covered; nationalities of publishers; languages used; dates of publication; and for serial reference materials, beginning and ending dates.

Then, individual titles in the collections were checked against the titles in Sheehy’s Guide to reference books (9th ed.) to determine the percentage of volumes each library’s.

Finally, duplicate titles in the three reference collections were ascertained and analyzed in several aspects. As an appendix, a list of duplicate titles attached, which may be useful for reference librarians to develop reference collections.

Findings of the study are presented in a series of tables and figures, and discussed taking into consideration particular institutional factors of, each library.