Anonymous Patron writes “Library accounts not activated by 40 percent of students: Frightening, though not entirely suprising, news from CMU where according to figures collected Friday from the library database, 11,990 students — or only about 60 percent of on-campus students — have an active library account.
“I’ve been to the library twice just to check it out; I think it’s really nice,� said St. Clair Shores sophomore Josh Lanivich. “But I haven’t really found any use for it yet. I’m sure if a project comes up in a class, I’ll use it.�
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Data
“Frightening, though not entirely suprising, news from CMU where according to figures collected Friday from the library database, 11,990 students — or only about 60 percent of on-campus students — have an active library account.”
I think this is a type of statistic we have just because we can. I’m a bit suspicious that it has probably never been any different. I remember doing special “library tutoring” for a senior in vet med (that’s a bachelor’s + 4 years) who had never been in ANY library in her life. She was from a rural area and had been inside a bookmobile, but had managed her entire undergraduate career without stepping foot in the college library. When I was an undergrad at the U. of I., my main reason for going to the library was to study and to meet guys.
Although I had worked in my town library and in a college library, I didn’t really know anything about libraries until graduate school.
I don’t know what an “active” account it, but many, many schools have required BI classes for freshman that at least get them in the door. If activate means charging out material, that may be a very different animal than using the library.