Identifying Subject-specific Conferences as Professional Development Opportunities for the Academic Librarian

A major challenge facing academic libraries is the need for reference librarians to become knowledge experts in their assigned subject areas. The subject-specialist approach increases the effectiveness of collection development, classroom instruction, and faculty liaison interactions. Simultaneously, this approach creates the need for continuous learning opportunities. Conferences organized around academic disciplines provide a direct connection to subject-specific information as well as opportunities for meeting people who share common interests. With the increase in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to teaching and research, the authors argue that attending subject-specific conferences is the best way to keep up with information needs in various fields. This article reviews the benefits of attending academic conferences and discusses five strategies for selecting an appropriate subject conference in any discipline. First-person accounts of conference experiences illustrate these benefits

Estudos quantitativos na pesquisa em informação : análise de uma prática

Orientador : Leilah Santiago BufremCo-orientador: Sonia Maria BredaMonografia (graduação) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas, Curso de Gestão da Informação.Inclui referênciasResumo : Identificação e discussão de estudos quantitativos no âmbito das pesquisas em informação. Explora a literatura sobre a investigação científica em Ciência da Informação e aborda os termos utilizados para definir suas atividades de mensuração. Realiza um levantamento de referências de artigos da área em três fontes bibliográficas especializadas internacionais, no período de 1994 a 2001, com um recorte específico relacionado a atividades de mensuração. Utiliza, para tanto, a Base de Dados METRI, construída em WinIsis, especificamente para atender propósitos do presente estudo. Engloba a definição da nomenclatura atribuída aos estudos quantitativos e sua aplicabilidade na pesquisa em informação. Observa o surgimento de novos termos e também de suas aplicações decorrentes da utilização de suportes diferentes e das características distintas da informação

The impact of conference attendance on Australian academic librarians and libraries

The focus of this research project is the impact of conference attendance, in the context of Australian academic librarians and libraries. The impact of conference attendance is shown to consist of three key themes: informational; social; and affective impact. In addition, the study found nine factors that can influence the impact conference attendance can have on the delegate and on their institution, and it presents connections between key themes of impact and influencing factors

An international multidisciplinary analysis of scholarly communication through investigating citation levels

This thesis seeks to demonstrate that the new facilities of Web of Science (WoS) online can be used in new ways to enhance understanding of scholarly communication. It investigates four aspects of scholarly communication: characteristics of highly cited articles, citation levels of collaborative articles, citation levels of multi-disciplinary articles, and patterns of annual citation of highly cited articles. For the first two topics it investigates the WoS category of ‘Information Science & Library Science’ (IS&LS), whereas for the other topics it compares diverse WoS categories in science and social science. Although its main data source is WoS, its investigation of disciplinarity also uses Scopus. The thesis finds: (a) Highly cited IS&LS articles tend to be multidisciplinary and cited late, but are not necessarily first-authored by influential IS&LS researchers, (b) Amongst un-cite IS&LS articles the proportion of collaborative articles has remained almost constant over the past three decades whereas for higher cited articles it has grown steadily with time, (C) In social science subjects the level of citation of multi-disciplinary research are generally similar to that of mono-disciplinary research, whereas in science the citations levels for multi-disciplinary research are substantially lower than that of mono-disciplinary research, and (d) In both science and social science many very highly cited articles continue to be heavily cited more than twenty years after publication. This thesis also introduces and uses an indicator for measuring the extent of collaboration called ‘average partner scores’ and indicates a way in which the subject categories of WoS can be investigated without requiring a licence for the WoS database. Finally, it identifies and addresses some of the technical problems of using WoS online to investigate scholarly communication.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Online development in the Nordic countries : a history of online information from the 1960s to the '00s and NORDINFO's role in its development

Some of the contributions to this book have previously been published as unedited manuscripts in 2007 at http://hdl.handle.net/1975/149