College and Research Libraries
July 2009, Vol. 70, No. 4
Abstracts 
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Where There’s a Will There’s a Way?: Survey of Academic Librarian Attitudes about Open Access
Kristi L. Palmer, Emily Dill, and Charlene Christie
PDF version
Academic libraries are becoming increasingly involved in scholarly communication through work with institutional repositories and other open access models. While academic librarians are being encouraged to promote these new models, their opinions about open access have not been documented. This article reports on the results of a national survey conducted in the summer of 2006 of academic librarians’ attitudes toward open access principles and related behaviors. While attitude responses were largely positive, there were differences in levels of support related to respondents’ job descriptions and funding of open access activities. Surveyed librarians appear to be more comfortable with tasks that translate traditionally held responsibilities, such as educating others, to the open access environment. Most significant is the discrepancy between stated support of library involvement in open access initiatives and significantly lacking action toward this end. The results offer insight into how open access proponents may better focus their advocacy efforts.
Undergraduate Perceptions of Information Literacy: Defining, Attaining, and Self-Assessing Skills
Melissa Gross and Don Latham
PDF version
This investigation uses interview data on student conceptions of and experiences with interacting with information. In addition, student scores on the Information Literacy Test (ILT) provide data that allow for comparison of student perceptions to their level of information literacy as measured by a standardized test. A relational approach, informed by competency theory and the imposed query model, provide the framework for the study design and interpretation of the data. Findings reveal a general view of information literacy focused on product rather than process, a perception of achieving information skills on their own, a preference for people over other information sources, and an emphasis on personal interest as key to successful information seeking.
The Federal Depository Library Program in 2023: One Perspective on the Transition to the Future
Peter Hernon and Laura Saunders
PDF version
The Government Printing Office (GPO) administers a depository library program that provides the public with access to government publications, including digital ones. For years, the GPO, its Depository Library Council, and documents librarians have discussed the future role of member libraries. This article explores a different, but critical, perspective: that of directors of university libraries within the Association of Research Libraries. Thirty directors reviewed different scenarios and selected the one they envision their university assuming. The findings have implications for librarians in any depository library program and others interested in the future role of libraries as collection and service centers for government information resources.
Unless Otherwise Indicated: A Survey of Copyright Statements on Digital Library Collections
Melanie Schlosser
PDF version
This study examines the copyright statements attached to digital collections created by members of the Digital Library Federation. A total of 786 collections at twenty-nine institutions were examined for the presence of statements and their content evaluated for common themes. Particular attention was paid to whether the institutions in question are meeting their obligation to educate users about their rights by including information about fair use and the public domain. Approximately half the collections surveyed had copyright statements, and those statements were often difficult to distinguish from terms of use and were frequently vague or misleading.
An Assessment of the Completeness of Scholarly Information on the Internet
Chuanfu Chen, Qiong Tang, Xuan Huang, Zhiqiang Wu, Haiying Hua, Yuan Yu, and Song Chen
PDF version
In this paper, the authors propose an assessment framework of the completeness of scholarly information on the Internet, and then obtain a list of Web pages by searching for 32 key terms in eight subjects through Google, Yahoo, and Altavista. The 2,814 sample pages are examined according to the evaluation framework. The results reveal that the overall mean score of the completeness of online scholarly information was 2.92; only 11 percent of samples provide complete scholarly information. There is a statistically significant difference (P<0.05) in the completeness of those Web pages with various domain names, resource types, and subjects. In conclusion, the completeness of scholarly information on the Internet is unsatisfactory and needs to be improved immediately. Furthermore, the evaluation framework and its application developed herein could be a useful instrument for librarians, researchers, students, and the public to select Internet resources.