Reference Section

[Chandrasekhar Reddy Lodugu]

Reference Section: How many copies of each title should be kept in an MBA College Library?

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Sri Chandrasekhar Reddy Lodugu,

Thanks for your post and addressing a practical issue which we often face in our workspehere. 

Practically speaking, there should not be any fixed norms for the number of titles to be marked reference. Because "reference" books are those which are (a) not for regular reading (like Dictionaries  etc.) and (b) certain number of LIMITED COPIES OF NOT TO BE LENT OUT books while several copies of those titles are meant for regular issue & consultation by the students. As I presume, confusion for the first type of books does not arise generally while, for the second type, it is quite often and never-the-less the issue is both complex & critical. The number of reference copies vary from Library to Library according to their strength of collection, varieties in collection, number of students & no. of copies of particular title(s) If an institute, say, an Management Institute conducts both BBA & MBA (two streams) Courses with 75 students in each class comprising 450 students, they should have a basic collection of at least 6 titles of each subject & on an average 23 copies of each titles.  As such, if they have 5 subjects per semester of total 6 semesters, They will require at least 12,000 copies to cater both BBA & MBA students. In that case, if they retain 03 copies of each title as reference copies allocating 20 copies each of 6 titles of a subject for circulation among 75 students.of each class. If there are short falls in collection and in the varieties of titles, It will be difficult to allocate 03 titles as reference copies; that's all.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray