Use of book borrowing statistics as a means to establish library use by pre-registration nursing students : a case study at the University of Northumbria

This paper examines the book borrowing by pre-registration students at the University of Northumbria over a three-year period. Nursing education was transferred into higher education in the early 1990s resulting in large numbers of extra students in many higher education institutions. Little work has been done to establish the impact this move has had in library and information services. This work analyses book borrowing by two nursing pre-registration courses from three perspectives: quantity of books borrowed, book borrowing dispersed over an academic year and the subject material borrowed. Analysis of borrowing is completed using the TALIS Library software. The findings of this study are related to some of the major issues facing those providing library and information services to health students.