Enhanced Catalogue Records Positively Impact Circulation but Are Not Used to Their Potential in Patron Searching. A Review of: Tosaka, Y., & Weng, C. (2011). Reexamining content-enriched access: Its effect on usage and discovery. College & Research Libraries, 72(5), 412-427.

Objective – To determine how contentenrichedcatalogue records impact thecirculation rates of print resources in foursubject areas, and to investigate how thisadditional metadata influences OPACsearching and item retrieval. Design – Analysis of circulation data,bibliographic records, and OPAC search logs. Setting – A library at a four-yearundergraduate residential college in theNorth-eastern United States. Subjects – Bibliographic records for 88,538titles; data from 7,782 circulation transactions;and 130 OPAC search strings and relatedcirculation data. Methods – In the first part of the study,bibliographic records for print items publishedsince 1990 were extracted from the library’sintegrated library system (ILS) in the followingLibrary of Congress (LC) classes: D, E, F, H, J,L, P, Q, R, S, and T. It is assumed thatelectronic books were excluded from thisstudy because their usage is not tracked in theILS. These LC classes were chosen tocorrespond to the subject areas targeted by theresearchers for comparison – “history, socialsciences, language and literature, and scienceand technology” (p. 416). The data fileincluded the publication date of the title, aswell as values for the MARC fields identified by the researchers as containing content-enriched data. These fields were MARC 505 (an item’s table of contents or list of works included), MARC 520 (summaries or annotations), and MARC 856 (URL to electronic location of related material or electronic copy) (p. 416; Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office, 2003, 2008a, 2008b). The authors analyzed records for 88,538 titles and determined the total number of records containing each of the MARC fields either singly or in combination.Data relating to circulation transactions for items located in these LC classes from January to May 2009 was also identified. Like the bibliographic records, circulation data was pulled for print items only. The researchers identified 7,782 circulation transactions that met the study criteria for the period in question.In the second part of the study, circulation data for September 22, 2009 was obtained and sorted into the four subject categories identified in Part I of the study. The authors indicate that this date was chosen at random, but do not specify how. Researchers compared the records of the 133 titles borrowed that day from the LC classes studied to the OPAC search logs from September 16-22, 2009 to determine which searches led to the circulation of these items. The authors felt that searches resulting in checkouts on the day in question may have b