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College & Research Libraries
March 2008, Volume 69, No. 2

Abstracts

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Research Productivity Among Librarians: Factors Leading to Publications at Penn State
Joseph Fennewald
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Librarians at the Pennsylvania State University are consistently among the most published in academic library journals. This study explored the factors contributing to research productivity among a cross section of Penn State librarians. Personal motivation, intellectual curiosity, and education were important factors in practice-, institutional-, and discipline-based research among the 38 librarians surveyed here. However, being part of an institution, where everyone is expected to participate in research, may be the most critical factor.

A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Relationship between Critical Thinking and Library Anxiety among Undergraduate Students in their Information Search Process
Nahyun Kwon
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This study investigated the nature of associations between critical thinking dispositions and library anxiety among 137 undergraduate students. The study was conducted by administering standardized survey instruments and by analyzing the contents of student essays on critical incidents of their library use experience. The results of these quantitative and qualitative investigations consolidated each other by revealing negative associations between the two variables. An interactive model of critical thinking and library anxiety emerged from the investigation, showing how they interact with each other during the library use process. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed within the frameworks of affective information behavior and information literacy, respectively.

Measuring Students’ Information Literacy Skills through Abstracting: Case Study from a Library & Information Science Perspective
Maria Pinto, Andrés Fernández-Ramos, and Anne-Vinciane Doucet
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New education models based essentially on competencies and skills are gradually displacing the old systems based on teacher instruction and passive and memory-based learning in students, as these new competencies allow the student to learn actively with better levels of performance. We consider abstracting as a transcendent learning tool to analyze the basic role of information analysis and synthesis skills within the learning processes and their relation to the abstracting processes. Using an action-research methodology, we analyze the abstracting skill of students on the first and final courses of the Faculty of Library and Information Science at the University of Granada (Spain). Based on postulates from information literacy, analysis and synthesis competencies are studied through the students’ modus operandi at the different abstracting stages. Similarities and differences between the two groups of students are perceived and displayed, with reference to the relation between the learned subjects and the levels of competence and skill. In the light of these results, meaningful patterns and recommendations for improving students’ skill levels are proposed.

Better Than Brief Tests: Coverage Power Tests of Collection Strength
Howard D. White
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Improving on ideas developed in Brief Tests of Collection Strength, this paper presents coverage power tests, an empirical method for evaluating collections in all types of libraries by means of ranked holdings counts from OCLC’s WorldCat. The new method measures library coverage of subject literatures across levels of the WLN or RLG collection intensity scales that are increasingly difficult to attain. It defines literatures and collections unambiguously, permits objective comparisons of libraries, and is potentially automatable. Results of 38 tests in nine subjects at 30 libraries have high face validity in rating collections. Graphical analysis with the new method also clarifies the bibliometric relation between individual collections and subject literatures.

Selected Reference Works, 2007
Sarah Witte and Mary Cargill
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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).