Home May 2005 abstracts

College and Research Libraries
May 2005, Vol. 66, No. 3

Abstracts

Understanding Information Use in a Multidisciplinary Field: A Local Citation Analysis of Neuroscience Research
Marian A. Burright, Trudi Bellardo Hahn, and Margaret J. Antonisse
PDF version
Assessing the information needs of a multidisciplinary academic community presents challenges to librarians managing journal collections. This case study analyzed the literature used by the neuroscience community at the University of Maryland to determine the following about the publications they cited: their type, their discipline, and how recent they were relative to the citing publication. The authors searched the ISI Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index to identify the publishing, citing, and coauthoring patterns of both faculty and graduate students to inform library decisions about collecting journals and other types of literature.

What Have We Got to Lose? The Effect of Controlled Vocabulary on Keyword Searching Results
Tina Gross and Arlene G. Taylor
PDF version
Using controlled vocabulary in the creation and searching of library catalogs has evoked a great deal of debate because it is expensive to provide. Leading to this study were suggestions that because most users seem to search by keyword, subject headings could be removed from catalog records to save space and cost. This study asked, what proportion of records retrieved by a keyword search has a keyword only in a subject heading field and thus would not be retrieved if there were no subject headings? It was found that more than one-third of records retrieved by successful keyword searches would be lost if subject headings were not present, and many individual cases exist in which 80, 90, and even 100 percent of the retrieved records would not be retrieved in the absence of subject headings.

Information-seeking Behavior of Physical Science Librarians: Does Research Inform Practice?
Cecelia M. Brown and Lina Ortega
PDF version
Physical science librarians rely on personal communication and online discussion groups for information to enlighten their practice. Scholarly journals appear third on the list of resources used to inform daily activities and are used primarily to support information literacy instruction, subscription decisions, and their own research as well as to learn about best practices in other libraries. The preferred library and information studies journals publish virtually equal proportions of research and nonresearch articles, with the majority of research articles being reports of qualitative surveys without statistical analysis. The popular journals were not those most highly cited, nor were the research articles cited to a greater extent than the nonresearch articles. In essence, the experiences and opinions of colleagues and patrons were found to be of greater value to the practice of physical science librarianship than reports of original research.

Relative Influence of the LibQUAL+™ Dimensions on Satisfaction: A Subgroup Analysis
John H. Heinrichs, Thomas Sharkey, and Jeen-Su Lim
PDF version
This research study investigates the influence of the identified LibQUAL+™ dimensions on various aspects of the user’s satisfaction with the Academic Library at Wayne State University. Multivariate regression analysis results show statistically significant impact of LibQUAL+™ dimensions on user satisfaction. Moderated regression analysis results show the moderating impact of various demographic variables on the relationships between LibQUAL+™ dimensions and user satisfaction. The results of this research can be used to alter resource allocation expenditures to improve user satisfaction.

A Theory-guided Approach to Library Services Assessment
Xi Shi and Sarah Levy
PDF version
This article examines the theoretical models applied to date in library assessment activities. A brief review of the history of library assessment practices and the evolution of their respective approaches is presented. A discussion of the theoretical concepts applied to these assessment activities in library and information science (LIS) as introduced from other fields, such as marketing and management information systems (MIS), follows. The conceptual issues and practical concerns in library assessment are then discussed. Focus is placed on the review of research concepts of service quality, customer/user satisfaction, and their applications in library assessment activities.