An exploration of the relationship between undergraduate students’ library book borrowing and academic achievement

Abstract

This exploratory study examines book circulation patterns among undergraduate university students at an English-language University in Istanbul, Turkey, in order to investigate the relationship between students’ academic achievement and discipline of study, gender and book borrowing habits. Overall, this study supports the important role of the academic library’s print book collection in supporting and contributing to student success and demonstrates a significant positive correlation between undergraduate students’ level of academic achievement and the number of books they borrowed from the university library. This positive correlation was found for students in all faculties and fields of study, but was strongest for students studying qualitative disciplines and was particularly strong for students enrolled in English as a foreign language programmes.

Keywords

Academic achievement academic libraries book circulation reading undergraduate students

It has long been recognized that academic libraries internationally are under duress as they struggle to balance shrinking budgets with increasing costs. In particular, skyrocketing journal prices and declining book circulation figures have resulted in shrinkage of book purchasing in many academic institutions. At the same time, many studies indicate that reading habits are changing, as university students forsake the deep reading provided by books in favour of the convenience and ease of access of electronic resources provided by the Internet or by the online electronic journal collection. However, book borrowing in academic libraries, though declining, is far from dead. This exploratory study examines book circulation patterns among undergraduate university students at an English-language University in Istanbul, Turkey, in order to investigate the relationship between students’ academic achievement, discipline of study, gender and book borrowing habits.

Literature review

As To Read or not to Read, one of a series of reports by the National Endowment for the Arts (2007) on the state of recreational reading in the United States, observes, cognitive psychologists and educational theorists have frequently sought to clarify the nature of the relationship between reading and other aspects of educational performance:

Reading has cognitive consequences that extend beyond its immediate task of lifting meaning from a particular passage. Furthermore, these consequences are reciprocal and exponential in nature. Accumulated over time – spiraling either upward or downward – they carry profound implications for the development of a wide range of cognitive abilities. (Cunningham and Stanovich, quoted in National Endowment for the Arts, 2007: 68)

Numerous researchers have found a positive correlation between achievement on reading tests and amount of recreational reading during the public school years. Fielding et al. (1988) found that reading as little as 10 minutes a day had a positive impact on reading test scores. Greaney and Hegarty (1987) and Watkins and Edwards (1992) found similar correlations and concluded that competent readers spend more time on independent reading than their less competent peers and that overall academic performance is related to reading skills. Krashen’s meta-analysis of in-school free voluntary reading programmes (1989, 1993, 1995a, 1995b, 2004) found that in-school Free Voluntary Reading or Sustained Silent Reading programmes, in which students select their own reading material from the class or school library, can increase students’ scores on standardized reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and writing tests, a finding supported by more recent studies by Chua (2008) and Madison (2009). These researchers have found a cyclical relationship between regular sustained reading and success in school: students who read regularly have a more positive attitude to reading and also experience more academic success (Chua, 2008; Clark and Rumbold, 2006; Howard, 2011; Krashen, 1993, 2004). A recent doctoral thesis by Coyle (2014) found that recreational reading in print format was a positive predictor of academic outcomes for American Grade 8 students whereas recreational reading in digital modes was consistently a negative predictor of academic performance: ‘For [Grade 8 students], when the frequency of recreational reading in digital modes increased, regression analysis predicted a decrease in academic outcome’ (Coyle, 2014:. 182). A forthcoming study by French and Norwegian researchers previewed in The Guardian (Flood, 2014) revealed that readers of digital texts remember less about a text’s temporal sequencing than readers of the same text in print format. Clearly, more study is needed into the impact of recreational reading in digital format.

Several researchers have demonstrated that the positive effects of reading extend into post-secondary education. The academic benefits of pleasure reading are emphasized by Babbitt Bray et al. (2004) who argue that the more college students read for pleasure the more likely they are to develop a strong vocabulary and cultural literacy. Ross (1999) observes that pleasure reading can provide valuable insights into personal relationships and experiences and can have a substantial impact on readers’ understanding of themselves and the world. The National Survey of Student Engagement (2009: 36) finds that the vast majority of American college students (74–80%) read fewer than four books for pleasure during the academic year and posits that academic workload is not entirely responsible for low levels of pleasure reading among this group. Falk-Ross (2001) suggests that a significant number of first-year students at colleges and universities in the United States enter post-secondary education with inadequate reading skills and are under-prepared to meet the requirements of their coursework. Garfield (2008) explores strategies to support and encourage student reading in a UK university, and concludes that university students are often unprepared for post-secondary study and that ‘deep’ reading must be ‘nurtured, encouraged, and enabled’ (p. 13) in academia. Elliott (2007, 2009) argues for the reintegration of readers’ services and the promotion of recreational reading in the academic library as one option to address the declining literacy rates of post-secondary students. Research studies conducted by Cho and Kim (2004) and Çetin and Kinay (2011) show positive correlations between the literacy skills of English as a foreign language students in Korea and Turkey, respectively, and their amount of leisure reading in English and the number of books they borrow from the academic library.

There is very limited research on the relationship between pleasure reading and a student’s choice of subject major in college or university, but a few international studies have been conducted. Chen (2007) examined data from two national surveys of the pleasure reading habits of university students in Taiwan, one addressing first-year students and the other fourth year students. The results of these surveys show that ‘humanities majors were reading more extracurricular material than natural science and education majors, but not necessarily more than math/computer science and engineering majors’ (Chen, 2007: 651). Karim and Hasan (2006) examined the academic and pleasure reading habits and attitudes of students at the International Islamic University Malaysia. They studied students in both IT-based and arts-based programmes and found that IT students were likely to ‘rely more on the web site as their reading materials and resources’ (p. 296). This study also found that students in the Arts and Humanities used the library at a much greater rate than their counterparts in IT-based programmes (p. 295).

Parlette and Howard (2010) studied the recreational reading habits of freshman students at two Canadian universities and concluded that reading for pleasure is a well-established habit amongst many first-year undergraduate students. First-year undergraduates primarily read for pleasure in order to relax but also recognized that pleasure reading could play a positive role in their academic performance, enhancing their range of background knowledge as well as their active vocabulary. Participants indicated that they preferred to read books for pleasure in print rather than digital format, although they preferred digital publications for their academic research papers. The findings of this study suggest that there is much that academic libraries could do to serve the recreational reading needs of undergraduate students. At a time when academic libraries are witnessing dramatic changes in patterns of use and are increasingly being asked to demonstrate their value and their contribution to student recruitment, retention and engagement (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2010, cited in Rose-Wiles, 2013: 131), this study found that the academic library could expand its role and its visibility in the university by fostering pleasure reading in addition to academic research and information literacy skills.

Many previous researchers have noted that as academic libraries increase their investment in electronic resources, both electronic journals and e-books, investment in print books has declined, as has print book circulation (Anderson, 2011; Bullis and Smith, 2011; Rose-Wiles, 2011, 2013; Stewart, 2011). The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) collects data on both academic library budgets and circulation statistics and makes this data available through the subscription-based service, ACRLMetrics. Rose-Wiles (2013: 131) observes that ‘in fiscal year 2010, the median proportion of the materials budget spent on electronic resources was 66% and the median spent on [print] monographs was 14%’, while from 1991 to 2009, book circulation rates declined by 19%. Anderson (2011) further notes that even these dramatic figures probably underestimate the decline in book circulation, since both library holdings and student enrolments have increased during this same time period, so that measuring book circulation per student per year demonstrated a greater decline in print book circulation that the raw data alone. Similarly Martell (2008) employed a ratio of median circulations to median full-time equivalent students to prove declining book circulation in Association of Research Libraries (ARL) libraries and concludes that this trend is likely to continue and even increase with the growing popularity of e-books in academic libraries. Connaway and Wicht (2007) observe that academic libraries have been slow to adopt e-books but that now their collection and usage is currently accelerating, a point reinforced by Miller (2011), whose study reports a dramatic 93% increase in academic library e-book collections in 2010.

Turkey has a well-established post-secondary education system consisting of both public and private universities (Çelik 2001). Çelik’s (2001) study observed that:

nearly all [Turkish] university libraries have plans for automation, and some of them have already established computerized systems for various purposes, including integrated library systems … As of October 2000, all Turkish university libraries have Internet access and twenty-six [out of fifty-three] of them have online catalogues for internal or external users. (p. 89)

However, Çelik concludes that by contemporary standards, most Turkish university libraries are underfunded and have inadequate collections of both print and electronic resources and are lagging behind in the transition to digital resources. In that same year, Tonta (2001) conducted an analysis of electronic information resources in Turkish university libraries and recommended the development of consortial agreements with publishers and vendors as the most effective strategy to expand electronic collections and overcome the challenges of limited budgets. Dilek-Kayaoglu’s (2008) survey of Istanbul University faculty members regarding their use of electronic journals revealed that the transition from print to e-journals was underway, though some disciplines were more comfortable with digital journals than others, noting ‘a typical e-journal user of the central library of Istanbul University is more likely to be a male faculty member in the field of health sciences aged between twenty and forty years old’ (p. 246). In contrast, faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences were significantly less frequent users of digital journals.

The research questions

The researchers conducted two separate studies of book circulation patterns among undergraduate university students at a major English-language university in Istanbul, Turkey in order to address the following research questions:

Is there a relationship/correlation between university students’ academic achievement (GPA) and number of books students borrowed from the university library?

Does the relationship/correlation change according to the faculty?

Does the relationship/correlation change according to the departments (Social Science vs. Sciences)?

Does the relationship/correlation change according to the programme type (regular undergrad vs English Preparatory School (EPS))?

Is there a difference in relationship/correlation between male and female students in EPS in relation to academic achievement and number of borrowed books from the library?

Method

Data for statistical calculations was acquired from the University Student Affairs Office and Library Administration. The Student Affairs Office provided data on students’ department, faculty, English Proficiency Exam (EPE) scores and GPA (grade point average) for 2134 undergraduate and 836 EPS students, for a total of 2970 students. Data confidentially was maintained to protect the privacy rights of the participants. The library administration provided data on each student’s borrowing patterns for print books over the past year. For privacy reasons, they could not release data on the specific titles borrowed, but they were able to provide aggregate data on broad categories of books borrowed which revealed that undergraduate students primarily borrowed books related to their fields of study whereas EPS students primarily borrowed recreational reading materials (graded readers, novels, magazines) to develop their foreign language skills.

Two studies were conducted, using SPSS to run correlation tests such as ANOVA, t-tests and Pearson Correlation, to examine the strength of the relationship between borrowed library books and academic achievement. The first study analysed the relationship between undergraduate students’ GPA and overall borrowing habits and the second study analysed EPS students’ borrowing habits and the correlation of these habits with their scores on the EPE.

Study 1

This study examined the relationship between 2134 undergraduate students’ GPA and total number of books borrowed from the university library during their university study between 2010 and 2014. The students were from four faculties, Arts and Sciences (n=811), Law (n=85), Economics and Administrative Sciences (n=664) and Engineering (n=574). Because some faculties include a large number of departments, the departments were also sub-classified as either ‘qualitative’ or ‘quantitative’. In other words, the departments which did not include courses based on numbers (mathematics or statistics) were labelled qualitative and the departments that relied heavily on numbers (mathematics and statistics) were categorized as quantitative. For example, even though the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of Physics are from the same Faculty – Arts and Sciences – the former was labelled qualitative and the latter as quantitative for analysis.

Firstly, analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were conducted to find out whether or not there is an influence between the number of books borrowed from the university library and students’ GPA. Table 1 shows a highly statistically significant difference (F=28, 944, p=0.000) between the number of books borrowed and academic achievement (GPA).

Table 1.

One way ANOVA analysis of GPA mean in relation to borrowed library books.

	Sum of squares	df	Mean square	F	Sig.
Between groups	43987.475	3	14662.492	28.944	.000
Within groups	1079007.905	2130	506.576
Total	1122995.380	2133

According to the statistical analysis in Table 2, there exists a positive relationship between all undergraduate students’ GPA and the number of books they borrowed from the university library. That is to say, there is a moderate correlation (r=.426) between the university students’ academic achievement and the books they borrowed from the library. The statistical results in Table 2 also show the degree of relationship/correlation between borrowed library books and students’ academic achievement in terms of individual faculty of study. Table 2 demonstrates that students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences demonstrate the strongest correlation between GPA and number of library books borrowed whereas the Faculties of Law and Engineering show the weakest correlation.

Table 2.

Pearson correlation between students’ GPA and number of borrowed library books.

Faculty	N	r
Arts & Sciences	811	.456(**)
Economics & Administrative Sciences	664	.375(**)
Engineering	574	.303(**)
Law	85	.302(**)
Total	2134	.426(**)

All correlations are significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

The 2134 students were separated into two groups regardless of their faculty, in order to see the relationship between students in qualitative fields versus students in quantitative fields and number of books borrowed from the university library. The departments classified as qualitative include English Language and Literature, American Culture and Literature, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Turkish Language and Literature, History, Law, International Relations, Political Science and Public Administration. In contrast, the departments of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Computer Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Genetics and Bio-engineering, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Banking and Finance, Economics and Business include the study of mathematics and statistics as part of the curriculum and are classified as quantitative.

Table 3 demonstrates that there is a positive relationship between graduates in both qualitative and quantitative disciplines and the number of borrowed library books. However, the correlation for students in qualitative disciplines (r=.458, n=1292, p=0.001) is stronger than the correlation for students in quantitative disciplines (r=.350, n=842, p=0.001).

Table 3.

Pearson correlation between students’ GPA and number of borrowed library.books in relation to qualitative and quantitative fields of study.

Field of study	N	r
Qualitative	1292	.458(**)
Quantitative	842	.350(**)

All correlations are significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Study 2

The data for 836 students (386 males and 450 females) aged 17 to 19 from the University’s EPS was analysed to determine the relationship between students’ scores on the EPE and the number of books they borrowed from the university library. Since English is the language of instruction at this particular university, students who fail to pass the EPE at the beginning of the academic year have to attend EPS for one year to complete intensive English courses according to their level of placement. The students take the EPE again after completing the programme at the EPS and those who are successful are able to continue their undergraduate study in their relevant department/faculty. This study considered their post-study EPE score only, written after students have spent a year in the EPS with access to university library resources.

Results

As can be seen in Table 4, there is a strong relationship between all EPS students’ post-EPS training EPE scores and the number of books borrowed from the university library during their EPS studies. In fact, this correlation (r=.616, n=836, p=0.001) is significantly higher than the correlation (r=.426, n= 2134, p=0.001) for general undergraduate students in relation to borrowed library books. Moreover, the data in Table 4 also indicates that male students’ correlation (r=.630, n=386, p=0.001) is higher than that of female students (r=.616, n=450, p=0.001). However, the results of the Fisher z test reported statistically insignificant value (z=.54) between male students (r=.630) and female students (r=.607) correlations in relation to EPE scores and number of books borrowed from the library.

Table 4.

Pearson correlation between EPS students’ post EPS-training EPE scores and number of borrowed library books.

	N	r
Male students	386	.630(**)
Female students	450	.607(**)
Total	836	.616(**)

All correlations are significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

According to t-test results summarized in Table 5, female students in EPS received a higher mean (m=58.69, n= 450, sd=17.99) on their EPE scores than did male students (m=53.55, n= 386, sd=21.03). However, there is no significant difference in means between male students (m=11,16, sd=10.92) and female students (m=12.47, sd=11.54) with regard to borrowed books from the library. Likewise, the t-test results of Independent Sample Test also indicate that there is a significant difference between female and male students’ means from the EPE scores, t(762)=-3.76, p=0.001. However, the same t-test results found no significant difference in means between male and female students in relation to the number of books borrowed from the library, t(834)=-1.67, p=.095).

Table 5.

T-Test results of means in relation to students’ mean test scores and number of books borrowed.

	Gender	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	t	df	p
Scores	male	386	53.5596	21.03597	−3.760	762.367	0.001
	female	450	58.6956	17.99191
Books	male	386	11.1684	10.92502	−1.670	834	0.095
	female	450	12.4733	11.54214

All correlations are significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Discussion

Overall, this study supports the important role of the academic library’s print book collection in supporting and contributing to student success. While digital materials are, without doubt, important sources of information, this study demonstrates a significant positive correlation between undergraduate students’ level of academic achievement and the number of books they borrowed from the university library. This positive correlation was found for students in all faculties and fields of study. However, while a positive correlation between number of books borrowed and level of academic achievement was found for all students regardless of their field of study, higher correlations were noted for students in some faculties (i.e. a stronger correlation was found for students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences than for students in other faculties) and area of study (a stronger correlation was found for students in qualitative fields of study than in quantitative fields).

Furthermore, the study found that the correlation (r=.616) between EPS students’ academic achievement (as measured by their post-EPS training EPE test score) and the number of borrowed library books was moderately higher than the correlation for that of other undergraduate students (r=.426). This correlation could result from the fact that EPS students are primarily borrowing recreational reading materials such as novels, graded readers and magazines that had a direct impact on their English language skills. The more they read in English, the higher their academic outcomes. This finding supports prior research (Krashen, 1989, 1993, 1995a, 1995b, 2004). In relation to the results of the present study, it is possible to conclude that the promotion of graded readers by EFL/ESL teachers may facilitate/accelerate learner’s second language learning process and that the more motivated the reader, the stronger his or her English language skills become. The present study also found some gender differences for EPS students: female students read more books than their male counterparts, and this may have contributed to the higher means they achieved on the EPE in comparison to the males.

It is likely that EFL/ESL teachers are well aware of the significant role that extensive pleasure reading plays in second language learning process, since this relationship has long been acknowledged in the language arts research literature. Thus, it is possible, if not probable, that they specifically encouraged EPS students to borrow books from the university library and this encouragement indirectly contributed to students’ EPE scores.

Conclusions and further study

While it is not possible to attribute a causal relationship book borrowing and academic performance (i.e. we cannot know whether students who are already academically strong borrow more books or whether the increased book borrowing actually causes stronger academic outcomes), this study does demonstrate a clear correlation: students who borrow more books from the university library tend to have higher GPAs, regardless of field of study.

While this study suggests the existence of a significant relationship between student book borrowing and academic success, it is an exploratory study of a very limited population in a specific geographic location, which may not be representative of other regions. As is typical of exploratory work, this study answered some questions but suggested several avenues of further research. First, this study included aggregate data on broad categories of titles borrowed, but did not include data on the actual print titles students were borrowing and whether these monographs were being used for academic purposes or for pleasure reading. This information would help clarify the potential causal relationship between book borrowing and academic achievement. Further study could also include a comparative analysis of students’ borrowing patterns for print monographs and e-books, correlated to field of study and GPA. More challenging to analyse is students’ e-journal access, but a study which takes into account students’ use of electronic journals correlated to field of study and GPA could provide important insights into students’ use of information in a wide range of formats and their academic success. Furthermore, this study classified fields of study into two broad divisions of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’. A more fine-grained analysis, which considered specific sub-disciplines, would provide a more nuanced insight into book borrowing patterns. This more fine-grained analysis could also investigate differences between students undertaking a degree programme and students enrolled in non-credit language programmes. Lastly, for the current study, the EPS only provided general cumulative EPE scores and so it was not possible to investigate the influence on borrowed library books on specific second language acquisition skills. It would be interesting in a further study to analyse the EPE scores in more detail to see whether or not there is a correlation between number of borrowed library books and individual skills (reading, listening, writing, speaking, and grammar).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Yakup Çetin is Associate Professor of Foreign Language Teaching in the Faculty of Education at Fatih University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is interested in various aspects of foreign language education: media, methodology, psycholinguistics, vocabulary, reading, etc. Besides writing articles, he has published several ELT books and materials and has taught English in Turkey, Georgia, and Iraq.

Vivian Howard is Associate Professor in the School of Information Management in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Her research interests include the social benefits of reading for pleasure, the role of social media in promoting pleasure reading, and the information needs of international students. She is the editor of the YA Hotline newsletter and one of the creators of the Sea Stacks website.

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