Johnson County Community College Library: A Quantitative History of the First Years with Projections to the Year 2000

The purpose of this study was to chart and visually display the library services at Johnson County Community College during the first 18 years of its existence and to project the growth of JCCC library services to the 21st century. Important, but almost incidental to this portrayal, was the examination of effects of four major alterations to library operations or routines: loss of programmable space, conversion to microform catalogs, acceptance into the OCLC network, and six weeks of inaccessibility to the book collection.

The study employed two powerful methods of investigation: cliometrics, the method of historical inquiry that relies on the counting and reporting of events or behaviors; and celeration charting, the method of reporting frequency counts on semilogarithmic charts. The cumulated data, displayed on these charts, not only describe the magnitude of such activities as circulation, attendance, acquisitions, expenditures, etc.; they also graphically illustrate the growth of these activities over a span of 18 years.

Furthermore, this dissertation demonstrates the utility of using Standard Celeration Charts to examine, compare, and predict library organizational behaviors. To this end, 119 discrete JCCC library behaviors have been examined, charted, and presented on 59 summary charts.