Annals of Japan Society of Library Science

To investigate the statistical characteristics of the distribution of duplicate books among Japanese university libraries and its relationship to Zipf's law, the union catalog database of Japanese and European language books, maintained at the National Center for Science Information System, was analysed. The investigation included four steps, ① sampling of books from database and tabulation of data, ② specification of models based on Zipf's law, ③ estimation of model parameters, ④ statistical goodness-of-fit test.
Statistical analysis applied to both of the size-frequency distribution and the rank-size distribution，revealed that Zipf's law is quite applicable to the distribution of both of the books in Japanese and European languages. The models adopted are not the well-known general forms of Zipf's law, that is, size-frequency model g(x)=ax^-b and rank-size model f(r)=αr^-β or f(r)=α(r十γ)^-β (Mandelbrot's law), but the more generally extended forms, that is, size-frequency model, g(x)=a(x+c)^-b and rank-size model f(r)=α(r+γ)^-β+δ.

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The author conducted the survey using a questionnaire toward people related to music, and analyzed 120 music scholars and 78 music players (performers). Here the author reports information needs and library uses in music field through the comparison between scholars and players (including composers and conductors), and describes problems of library services in music libraries.
Major findings are as follows:
(1) There is a difference in information needs between scholars and players. That is, scholars need several kinds of documents (such as literatures, music scores, sound recordings and so on) for their researches. On the other hand, players mainly need music scores and sound recordings and need literatures supplementary for their performances.
(2) There is a difference in library uses between scholars and players. That is, the dependence and interest of players are relatively low compared to those of scholars. But the difference results from the fact of whether or not they belong to colleges or universities.
(3) Because the access to scores and sound recordings is restricted compared to the access to literatures in music libraries, players, who mainly need scores and sound recordings, do not depend on music libraries very much. And this limitation in access to scores and sound recordings is a problem in music libraries.

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