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College and Research Libraries
September 2006, Vol. 67, No. 5
Abstracts
Convergence in the Library’s News Room: Enhancing News Collections and Services in Academic Libraries
Debora Cheney, Jeffrey Knapp, Robert Alan, and Pamela Czapla
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The use and importance of newspaper collections in academic libraries have been in decline as acquisition costs have increased significantly as the difficulty obtaining daily issues in a timely manner has grown, and as newspaper readership has declined nationally. In contrast, today’s student and researcher are using television and Internet news sources heavily. This article explores the role of the academic library’s news collections in complementing the university’s Newspaper Readership Program and supporting faculty efforts to develop their students’ critical thinking and media literacy skills. The authors suggest that digital news forms, including television, should be considered and included as part of the library’s collections. In this light, lessons can be learned from convergence taking place in the news industry. Libraries must also "converge" news sources to provide library users with news sources, which reflect today’s news environment and also reflect the "information cycle." The newly created News Room at Pattee Library incorporates a three-television news viewing area; a broader selection of newspaper titles (particularly international titles); and a news magazine collection, as well as providing access to a wide variety of news aggregator database, and the library’s significant historical microfilm collection. A temporary television installation and focus groups were used to help inform the development of the News Room and to determine interest and resistance to sound and televisions in the library. The Libraries’ Serials Department provided analysis of newspaper delivery options (and reliability) and related subscription costs, as well as suggestions for reducing the number of missing/nonreceipt issues. In addition, greater focus was placed on niche reference service supporting news sources and news-related research. Use of the News and Microforms Library has increased.
Plagiarism Instruction Online: Assessing Undergraduate Students’ Ability to Avoid Plagiarism
Pamela A. Jackson
PDF version
This study assesses undergraduate students’ understanding of plagiarism through the use of an interactive, Web-based tutorial, Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping. The author details the instructional design process used to create this information literacy resource and integrate it into the curriculum. Data from 2,829 student quiz scores are analyzed to assess student learning. The results of this study indicate that students have difficulty grasping concepts related to paraphrasing. A comparative analysis of pre- and posttest results shows that student scores improved an average of 6 percent.
If You Build It, Will They Learn? Assessing Online Information Literacy Tutorials
Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay, Lara Cummings, Corey M. Johnson, and B. Jane Scales
PDF version
With the support of an internal grant, the Washington State University Library Instruction Department was able to undertake an assessment program to measure the use and effectiveness of online tutorials built by the department. Students viewed four of the tutorial products and were asked to perform tasks using these tutorials. They also answered a number of questions designed to garner information about attitudes, usage patterns and perceptions of library resources and services. Results of the assessment activities and future plans for improving and expanding our tutorial offerings are discussed.
Tracking Cross-Disciplinary Information Use by Author Affiliation: Demonstration of a Method
Lina Ortega and Karen Antell
PDF version
In this paper, we report the results of a bibliometric study in which we track cross-disciplinary citation behavior in the sciences. We hypothesize that cross-disciplinary citation in the sciences increased over the time period 1985–2000. Unlike most previous studies in this area, we assign discipline to a paper by its first author’s affiliation, and we hypothesize that assigning papers to disciplines based on first-author affiliation would yield results consistent with previous findings on cross-disciplinary citation rates in the sciences. Using the output of scientists in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, and Physics departments at 12 large research universities in 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000 as our data set, we measure the cross-disciplinary citation rates of each discipline and compare our results to the findings of previous studies in this area.
Selected Reference Works, 2005-2006
Sarah Witte and Mary Cargill
PDF version
This article follows the pattern set by the semiannual series initiated by the late Constance M. Winchell more than fifty years ago and continued first by Eugene Sheehy and then by Eileen McIlvaine. Because the purpose of the list is to present a selection of recent scholarly and general works, it does not pretend to be either well balanced or comprehensive. A brief roundup of new editions of standard works is provided at the end of the articles. Code numbers (such as AC527) have been used to refer to titles in the Guide to Reference Books, 11th ed. (Chicago: ALA, 1996).
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