University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books
and their Students’ Sports Performances
Soichiro Nagami1 and Keita Tsuji2
1

College of Knowledge and Library Sciences, School of Informatics, University ofTsukuba
2Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies, University of Tsukuba
Abstract: To demonstrate the effectiveness of university libraries, we investigated therelationship between university students’ sports performances and their librarycollections of sports. By examining approximately 20 universities library collections
and their sports ranks, as indicated by Waseda Sports 2008, we demonstrated theirpositive correlation. In particular, the books whose topics are limited to enhancing
specific sports performances are more correlated than those about sports in general.
Keywords: University library, Sports performance, Library collection, College sport,
Information service

1. Introduction
Libraries offer various information service such as book reading, businessinformation and medical information services. Book reading services, inparticular, help children to develop an interest in books and contribute tobuilding their reading and learning abilities (Akahori (1957), Tamura (1961),
Nakano (1961), and Murayama (2008)). On the other hand, businessinformation services help people find jobs or start their own business andmight contribute to the national economy, while medical information services,especially for doctor, help save many patients’ lives (Yoshida (2008) andSuzuki (2006)). Libraries are helping various aspects of people and, although
it has not been demonstrated, they might contribute greatly in the field ofcompetitive sports performance. Here, “competitive sports” indicates thesports referred to the Olympic motto "Citius, Altius, Fortius". The primary
purpose of these sports is to win and improve scores. The results ofcompetitive sports such as in the Olympic and World Cup often affect thenational economy. In fact, if an athlete victorious in such competitions,
his/her country sometimes enjoys an economic boom. The Japan Ministry ofEducation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2007) describes that theresult of competitive sports also boosts the morale of the people. Thus, if it
can be illustrated that libraries contribute to sports performance, it may help

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performancesraise the value of these libraries (Okubo (2009)). In this view, we investigated
the relationship between university library collections and their consequent
competitive sports performances. The reason we focused on a university isthat it is relatively easy to define the users affected by the library collection
and their sports performance, as we mention later. On the other hand, it isdifficult to obtain the data of users’ sports performance affected by the public
libraries collections. In addition, the collections often aim at improving
public health rather than improving competitive sports performances (Goto(1987)). In addition, there are few special libraries in Japan. The Japan
Institute of Sports Sciences (JISS) is responsible for improving competitive
sports abilities;, however, it does not have a library of its own (JISS,2003-2008).

2．Methods
In this study, we conducted three investigations. First, we examined thenumber of books related to sports in general such as exercise physiology(henceforth “general sports books”) in the library collections (investigation 1).
Then, we examined the relationship between the number of university librarybooks related to specific sports such as basketball and football (henceforth“specific sports books”) and the universities’ performances in those sports(investigation 2).Finally, we summed up the number of specific sports books
and examined the relationship between the number and the consequent sports
performance (investigation 3).

2.1. Definition of college sport
In this paper, we define “sport” as the club activities whose teams haveinterscholastic matches. It does not include physical education class orrecreational group activities.

2.2. Sample universities
We used top 20 universities that were ranked in the “National SportsRanking” published in Waseda Sport 2008 (henceforth “Sports Ranking”) as
our investigation samples (henceforth we call these top 20 universities as“Ranked universities”and the others “Non-ranked universities”). We regard
the top 10 universities to have better sports performances than the other 10universities. Henceforth, we call the former “Upper universities” and thelatter as “Lower universities”. If the library collections of the Upper
universities were richer than those of the Lower ones, we can claim thatsports performance and library collections are correlated. These 20 libraries
are listed in Table 1.
The reason we used these universities instead of all the 750 universities in

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ SportsPerformancesJapan is that it is difficult to define their sports performances even if we used
random sampling.
Incidentally, the Sports Ranking is calculated in the following manner.
First, Waseda Sport collects the result data of various sports conventions suchas intercollegiates for a year. Then, they assign points to the top 8 universities
in each convention. Finally, they sum up the points of each university anddetermine the top 20 universities for that year.
Sports Ranking has been published every January since 1980. This is theonly data in Japan that quantifies the sports performances of many
universities in a unified manner.

2.3. Investigation 1
We define general sports books as books whose titles or subtitles include
terms like “exercise physiology”, “biomechanics” or “sport training”. We
leave the books of other titles for future research. We chose books publishedfrom 1945 to March 2008. The reason we did not use books published before
1945 are follows (1) Users do not read old books, (2) old information will not
be effective in improving competitive sports abilities, and (3) the National
Diet Library in Japan, which we will mention later was established after
WWII, and the books related to the period before 1945 would be missing.
We submitted the previously-mentioned three titles to each university
library OPAC and counted the number of holdings.

2.4. Investigation 2Sports Ranking deals with 43 sports. However, the Upper and Lower
universities do not appear in the ranking of some sports (mainly because they
are not good at such sports. Note that the Upper and Lower universities aredefined as universities that are good at “many” kinds of sports, and not “all”
kinds). Therefore, we chose sports wherein more than 7 Upper and Lower
Universities were ranked. Such sports amounted to 13 different types as listed
in Table 2.
We defined specific sports books as (1) books whose titles or subtitles
include each sport name and one of the following keywords: “training”,“practice”, “schema”, “improvement”, “secret”, “acquisition”, “lecture”,“coach” or “illustration” and (2) books published from 1945 to March 2008.
We submitted such combinations of keywords and conditions to NDL-OPAC
and searched for the specific sport books. NDL-OPAC is the OPAC of theNational Diet Library in Japan. It is considered to contain the bibliographic
data of the all books published in Japan. We selected up to 50 books for each
sport. After selecting the specific sports books, we searched for them inWebcat Plus (the union catalog of almost all the university libraries in Japan)

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performancesand counted the number of holdings in each university. 1 2

2.5. Investigation 3
We summed up the number of specific sports books in the Upper universities
and divided them by of whole collections (the numbers of all the books thelibraries had). The number of specific books is often influenced by the wholecollection. To examine the effect of the relative amount (i.e., ratio) of specificsports books rather than their absolute numbers, we divided the numbers. We
also calculated a similar ratio concerning the Lower universities andcompared them.

3. Results
3.1. Investigation 1
Since we were unable to use the OPAC of Nihon University, during theinvestigation period, we excluded the university and used the top 2-11
universities as samples. The results of Investigation 1 are shown in Table 1.
For instance, we can see that Chuo University library had 65 books whosetitles or subtitles included “exercise physiology”. On comparing the average
number of holdings of the Upper (top 2-11 universities) and Lower
universities (top 12-21 universities), we may say that the former is larger thanthe latter. For instance, the average number of holdings of books whose titles
or subtitles included “biomechanics” in the Upper and Lower universities
were 44.0 and 26.5, respectively.

1We use the personal OPAC for universities such as Waseda University which has
not joined the Webcat Plus union catalog.
2Unlike in Investigation 1, we used Webcat Plus instead of OPAC of each university.
This is because we did not consider using Webcat Plus until Investigation 1 ended.
We would like to use Webcat Plus for Investigation 1 and confirm the results in thefuture.

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performances

RankName of Univ.

1 Nihon Univ.
2 Waseda Univ.
3 Nippon Sport Science Univ.
4 Chuo Univ.
5 Meiji Univ.
6 Hosei Univ.
7 Kinki Univ.
8 Tsukuba Univ.
9 Ritsumeikan Univ.
10 Keio Univ.
11 Kwansei Gakuin Univ.
12 Kokushikan Univ.
13 Kansai Univ.
13 Tokai Univ.
15 Senshu Univ.
16 Toyo Univ.
17 Tenri Univ.
18 Doshisha Univ.
19 Juntendo Univ.
20 Fukuoka Univ.
20 Kyoto Sangyo Univ.
Average of top 2-11 universities
Average of top 12-21 universities

Exercisephysiology
52
9965
84
89
43107
70
6977
82
58
135307803188655975.5
62.6

Bio-mechanics Sport training
427727302726814345
42352547
11380272928254426.5

3674279201167
31251239
1236
152701110271431.2
19.1

Table 1: The number of holdings of general sports books

3.2. Investigation 2
The number of holdings of specific sports books of the Ranked universities isshown in Table 2. If the sports performance was ranked within the top 20 forthat sport, the value is represented with a half-tone. For instance, while
NSSU (Nippon Sport Science University) was ranked within top 20 in thecase of its performance in Judo and had 15 Judo related books, Hosei
University was not ranked within the top 20 and had only one Judo relatedbook.
The average number of holdings of Ranked and Non-ranked universities
are also shown in Table 2. We can see that the former is larger than the latter
except for in the case of Rugby.

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performances

Rank Name of Univ.

f Ao mFTo ei a rt re n ab il d ca cdkl al nJudoRiflery

K
yudoSwimming

Rugby

S
katingSkiingYacht

Vb oa ll ll eyFen
cingtennisSoft

1 Nihon

5121031615

432

312

52 Waseda

8188

1

16

17

7

2

13272

63 NSSU

151832

518

33

15

923

435

4174 Chuo

21082

96

32

51

10225 Meiji

13210

10000

2006 Hosei

1420

1

400003137 Kinki

24000310001118 Tsukuba

98511013504024169 Ritsumeikan

27100

154000101410 Keio

42511012223132111 Kwansei Gakuin

04

400

6

100

360

912 Kokushikan

52

1034

30

10

602

13 Kansai

10200

30000202

13 Tokai

3380

111320080415 Senshu

392

110402221416 Toyo

28502

1170

6083117 Tenri

0000000000000

18 Doshisha

38420252803

30

19 Juntendo

10000

2

00

0

0

000

20 Fukuoka

72

700

11

60

40

16

3

620 Kyoto Sangyo
2
Ave. of university
4.63
appearing in ranking

160

1

6

1

0

0

0

5

21

6.13

7.5

1

6.17

9.58

2.57

1.13

6.13

1.14 13.71

2.57

3.86

6

4.18

0.69

3.71

7.02

3.79

11.69

0.57

0.93

3.14

Ave. of university notappearing in ranking

3

4.79

2

Table 2: The number of holdings of specific sports books

3.3. Investigation 3
We calculated the ranks of Ranked universities concerning the 13 sports
which were used in Investigation 2. In that order, on the left side of Table 3,
we illustrate the number of holdings of specific sports books (“C” in Table 3)
divided by the number of whole collections (times 1,000) (“C/N” in Table 3).
The results concerning all the sports3 are shown on the right side of Table 3.
3

In this case, we do not have to rearrange the universities, and thus, the order is thesame as that in Table 1.

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performances

The average C/Ns of the upper half of the universities are higher than thoseof the lower half. For instance, the average C/Ns of the upper and lower halfof universities concerning 13 sports are 0.068 and 0.015, respectively. Thesetendencies can be observed even if we exclude the data of NSSU, which has
the largest C/N. Therefore, we can say that not only the absolute number ofbooks but also the ratio in collection might be related to the sports
performance.
Rank Name of Univ.
1 NSSU
2 Waseda
3 Tsukuba
3 Fukuoka
5 Chuo6 Ritsumeikan
7 Kokushikan
8 Nihon8 Keio10 Meiji
11 Kansai
11 Juntendo
13 Doshisha
13 Kwansei Gakuin
13 Hosei
13 Tenri
17 Tokai17 Senshu
19 Kinki
20 Toyo
20 Kyoto Sangyo
Ave. of the Upper 11
Ave. of the Lower 11C
228
107
86
62
62
44
27
92
48
10
10340
33
190
43
31
13
53
25
70.6
24.6

C/N
0.538
0.021
0.035
0.036
0.027
0.016
0.038
0.019
0.011
0.004
0.005
0.01
0.017
0.01
0.009
00.017
0.021
0.006
0.04
0.025
0.068
0.015

Rank Name of Univ.
1 Nihon2 Waseda
3 NSSU
4 Chuo5 Meiji
6 Hosei
7 Kinki
8 Tsukuba
9 Ritsumeikan
10 Keio
11 Kwansei Gakuin
12 Kokushikan
13 Kansai
13 Tokai
15 Senshu
16 Toyo
17 Tenri
18 Doshisha
19 Juntendo
20 Fukuoka
20 Kyoto Sangyo
Ave. of the Upper 11
Ave. of the Lower 11C
92
107
228
62
10191386
4448
33
27
1043
31
53
040
362
2567
30

C/N
0.019
0.021
0.538
0.027
0.004
0.009
0.006
0.035
0.016
0.011
0.01
0.038
0.005
0.017
0.021
0.04
0
0.017
0.01
0.036
0.025
0.063
0.02

Table 3: The number of holdings of specific sports books concerning 13
sports (left) and all sports (right)

4. Discussions
From the results of Investigation 1, 2, and 3, we can say that there was apositive correlation between the university sports performance and their

University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performanceslibrary collections. In particular, specific sports books seemed to be morerelevant than general sports books.
However, this does not imply that we have proved a causal relationshipbetween the collection and performance wherein a rich collection results ingood sports performance. It is very likely that the passion of the athletes oruniversities toward sports produces both a rich collection and a good sports
performance. Furthermore, a good performance might have lead to the richcollection of sport books.

5. Conclusions
We have demonstrated the positive correlation between university sports
performances and their library collections. The next step is, to investigate thefrequency of the use of the collection and its relation to consequent sports
performance.

References
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Tamura, N., (1961). On the relation between reading and learning achievement：Aconsideration of readers' interests and book availability in one class, School
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University Libraries’ Collection of Sports Books and their Students’ Sports
Performances