THE RELATIONSHIP OF LIBRARY SERVICES PROVIDED TO DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES STUDENTS AND STUDENT PERSISTENCE RATES IN TEXAS PUBLIC COMMUNITY JUNIOR COLLEGES

Two major problems were addressed by the research of this study. The first problem dealt with determining the ideal and the actual role which the community college library learning resources center should be playing in the education of the disadvantaged/developmental studies student. The other sought to determine if a relationship existed between the provision of special library services to developmental education students and academic success as measured by student persistence rates college-wide, in developmental studies courses, and in remedial English classes. Forty-three Texas public community college librarians completed a questionnaire survey form, supplemented by a statistical data sheet filled out by the researcher, which provided the basis for both the descriptive and correlational analyses performed in the study. T-test of significance, Pearson product-moment correlation, and discriminant analysis were used in the correlational analysis to determine whether to accept or reject the five research hypotheses of the study.;Other major findings of the study were: (1) Most Texas community college libraries do not provide a high level of service to developmental education programs. (2) Colleges do not routinely assign professional librarians to perform duties related to their developmental studies programs. (3) Large numbers of Texas community college students receive no library user instruction and developmental students appear to be the least likely group to receive such instruction. (4) Community college librarians are in almost unanimous agreement that they should teach library skills and the library tour and orientation lecture are the most prevalent methods used for such instruction.;The analysis resulted in the rejection of Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 as false. The first hypothesis stated that Texas community college libraries could not be grouped into two groups according to whether they provided a high or a low degree of services to developmental education students and, in fact, three groups could be identified including those with a low, an average, and a high number of services. The second hypothesis stating that no special institutional characteristics identified the separate groups was also rejected when two sets of variables or institutional characteristics emerged which could be used to distinguish between groups. These variables were positively correlated with characteristics of the institution related to size, budget, and service. Hypotheses 3, 4, and 5, however, positing in the null a relationship between student persistence rates and library services to developmental students, were accepted as true. There were no significant correlations found between the number of library services provided to developmental studies programs and the three indicators used to measure student academic success--student persistence rates college-wide, in developmental studies courses, and in remedial English classes.