Working on the South: A Statistical Description of Scholarly USe and Non-Use of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Manuscripts Department's Collections

To understand the factors that underlie the scholarly use or non-use of the collections of the Manuscripts Department of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a study of 155 scholars was conducted to assess the research practices of the University's academic scholars of the American South as they relate to the department's main collections. The results present a descriptive analysis of scholars affiliated with the University with regard to the degree and patterns of manuscript use or non-use in the various academic disciplines, reasons for non-use of manuscript materials, and the information material preferences of these scholars. Findings suggest that archivists can benefit from assessing the information needs of their larger constituency rather than their users alone.