Abstract
New York University (NYU) Libraries received a 1-year grant from the Association of Research Libraries to study users' responses to its recently installed Geac online catalog, Bobcat (Bobst Library Computerized Catalog). The survey instrument, developed for Council on Library Resources (CLR)-funded national study of responses to public access catalogs, was used to gather data from 810 online catalog users and 477 non-users during the 1983-1984 academic year. This final report on the study of the online catalog from a public services perspective contains sections on: previous public catalog research; the hypotheses developed to study the relationships between levels of satisfaction with the online catalog and user success with the system; the research site; the research procedure (instruments, data collection, the sample, and data analysis); study data and detailed results of the CLR Study, and a brief discussion of the results of the NYU and the Interview Studies. A final discussion reveals that as expected, users participating in the study generally liked the computer catalog and had few complaints. Even respondents who had little or no experience using Bobcat often rated it favorably, considered it a satisfactory place to search, and preferred it to the card catalog. The improvements most frequently requested involved increasing the number and availability of terminals rather than changing system features. Appendices include supplemental questions for the user and non-user questionnaires and the NYU and Interview Study data. (THC)