Can\u27t Get No Satisfaction: Lessons Learned while Developing an Assessment of Faculty Awareness and Attitudes towards Library Services

The presentation was offered as part of the CUNY Library Assessment Conference, Reinventing Libraries: Reinventing Assessment, held at the City University of New York in June 2014

Faculty\u27s Information Seeking Behavior in an ICT Environment: A Study of Koforidua Technical University

This study investigated the issues affecting Faculty Information Seeking Behavior in an ICT Environment. The study was conducted in Koforidua technical university (KTU), in Ghana. The study adopted a survey approach. The sampling method adopted for this study was simple random sampling techniques. The respondents of the study were drawn from the Faculty of Business and Management Studies (FBMS) of the Technical University. No sampling technique was used as the entire population of 98 was targeted. A structured questionnaire was developed and administered to elicit information from the respondents. A total of 98 copies of the questionnaire were strictly administered to the respondents with 96 (98%) duly answered and retrieved. Data collected were analysed using simple descriptive statistics. The study revealed that respondents’ main purpose for seeking for e-resource was to support them prepare teaching notes and writing research papers for presentation and publication. The study also brought to light that faculty’s awareness of the availability of e-resources and e-services in the library was rather of the low side. The study also revealed that majority of faculty accessed resources from the internet from open source websites using search engines as google, yahoo.com, MSN Bing.com etc. as the main searching tools. The study also revealed lack of awareness, inadequate searching skills, lack of time, are lack searching unstable internet connectivity were also revealed to be a constraint negatively affecting smooth access to e-resources in the library. Based on findings, the study recommended increased awareness creation, regular user skills training programmes, and improved communication strategies to get the users updated and abreast on issues relating to effective access and utilization of resources in the library

Faculty Research and Publication Practices

Understanding faculty work practices can translate into improved library services. This study documents how education and behavioral science faculty locate, retrieve, and use information resources for research and writing and how they publish and store their research materials. The authors interviewed twelve professors using a structured interview instrument and analyzed the data. Findings cover the role of library services in scholarly research processes, as well as the use of software and technologies and the challenges faculty face

How Unique Are Our Users? Part 2: Comparing Responses Regarding the Information-Seeking Habits of Education Faculty

This follow-up study examines whether or not findings of single institution studies are applicable to other institutions by performing an institution-to-institution comparison of the results obtained from an information-seeking behavior survey sent to education faculty at twenty research institutions. The results from this study corroborated what was found in the previous study conducted on the information-seeking behavior of engineering faculty in 2009. It indicates that general information about information-seeking behavior of faculty holds true across institutions, while information related to specific library services or facilities should be validated locally.Ye

A Needs-Driven and Responsive Approach to Supporting the Research Endeavours of Academic Librarians

In this article, the authors describe a grassroots model for research support and explore the success and evolving directions of this model based on three iterative needs assessments administered by the Librarian and Archivist Research Support Network (LARSN) Steering Committee at The University of Western Ontario. Needs assessments were identified as a critical tool to ensure that LARSN programming is relevant to librarians’ and archivists’ changing research needs. In the first four years of LARSN, three needs assessments were administered: in fall 2007, fall 2009, and spring 2011. The iterative needs assessments aimed to capture how the environment and research needs were evolving over time and the ways in which LARSN might continue to support a healthy and productive research environment. LARSN is faced with challenges that include a diversity of needs within its community, inconsistent participation levels in LARSN initiatives, and the inability to be all things to all people at all times. Still, LARSN is well received overall and rated positively by its community members. This is, in large part, because it has stayed true to its original mission to be needs-driven and responsive

Scholarly Information Seeking Habits and Behaviors of Missouri State University (MSU) Faculty

A group of faculty and staff of the MSU Libraries (J. Johnson, coordinator, L. Cline, W. Edgar, S. Fischer, G. Jackson-Brown, A. Miller), assisted by W. Meadows of the MSU Department of Anthropology, conducted an ethnographic study using direct observation and semi-structured interviews of a sample of MSU faculty members to gain knowledge about faculty scholarly information seeking habits and behaviors to provide insight into the following research questions: ● What information sources and technologies are used by MSU faculty members in their scholarship?● Where do faculty members conduct their research?● Whom do faculty members consult for research, writing, and information seeking assistance?https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/reports-lib/1000/thumbnail.jp

Beyond the paywall

In dieser Dissertation untersuche ich die Forschungswege von sechs Wissenschaftlern, die in verschiedenen Disziplinen und Institutionen in den Vereinigten Staaten und in der Tschechischen Republik arbeiten. Um dies zu tun, verwende ich sogenannte „multi-sited“ ethnographisch-methodische Strategien (d.h. Strategien, die Anthropologen verwenden, um Kulturen an zwei oder mehr geografischen Standorten zu vergleichen), mit dem Ziel, informationsbezogene Verhaltensweisen dieser Wissenschaftler im global vernetzten akademischen Umfeld zu untersuchen, englisch abgekürzt „GNAE“, ein Begriff, der sich speziell auf die komplexe Bricolage von Netzwerkinfrastrukturen, Online-Informationsressourcen und Tools bezieht, die Wissenschaftler heutzutage nutzen, d.h. die weltweite akademische e-IS, oder akademische Infrastruktur (Edwards et al. 2013). Die zentrale Forschungsfrage (RQ1), die in dieser Dissertation beantwortet wird, ist: Gibt es, gemäß der multi-sited ethnographischen Analyse der beteiligten Wissenschaftler in dieser Studie—Personen, die Forschung in verschiedenen Disziplinen und Institutionen sowie an unterschiedlichen Standorten betreiben—Hinweise darauf, dass ein signifikanter Anteil der nicht-institutionellen/informellen informationsbezogenen Forschung über Mechanismen im GNAE, die nicht von Bibliotheken unterstützt werden, betrieben wird, sowie (RQ2): Was für Muster sind vorhanden und wie beziehen sie sich auf informationswissenschaftliche und andere sozialwissenschaftliche Theorien? Und drittens (RQ3): Haben die Resultate praxisnahe Bedeutungen für die Entwicklung von Dienstleistungen in wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken? Ethnographische Strategien sind bisher noch nicht in der Informationswissenschaft (IS) eingesetzt worden, um Fragen dieser Art zu untersuchen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine informelle Informationsexploration nur bei zwei Wissenschaftlern, die mit offenen Daten und Tools einer verteilten Computing-Infrastruktur arbeiten, zu finden ist.In this dissertation I examine the pathways of information exploration and discovery of six scientists working in different research disciplines affiliated with several academic institutions in the United States and in the Czech Republic. To do so, I utilize multi-sited ethnographic methodological strategies (i.e., strategies developed by anthropologists to compare cultures across two or more geographic locations) to examine the information-related behaviors of these scholars within the global networked academic environment (GNAE), a term which specifically refers to the complex bricolage of network infrastructures, online information resources, and tools scholars use to perform their research today (i.e., the worldwide academic e-IS, or academic infrastructure [Edwards et al. 2013]). The central research question (RQ1) to be answered in this dissertation: According to the multi-sited ethnographic analysis of scientists participating in this study—individuals conducting research in various disciplines at different institutions in several geographical locations—is there evidence indicating a significant allotment of non-institutional/informal information-related exploration and discovery occurring beyond official library-supported mechanisms in the GNAE?, and—part two (RQ2) of the central research question—What (if any) patterns are exhibited and how do these patterns relate to information science (IS) and other social science theories? Both RQ1 and RQ2 are exploratory. I additionally ask (RQ3): What might all this mean in the applied sense? by showing examples of services piloted during the research process in response to my observations in the field. Multi-sited ethnographic strategies have not yet been employed in IS, as of the date of publication of this thesis, to examine such questions. Results indicate informal information exploration occurring only with two scientists who use of open data and tools on a distributed computing infrastructure

Mining, Modeling, and Leveraging Multidimensional Web Metrics to Support Scholarly Communities

The significant proliferation of scholarly output and the emergence of multidisciplinary research areas are rendering the research environment increasingly complex. In addition, an increasing number of researchers are using academic social networks to discover and store scholarly content. The spread of scientific discourse and research activities across the web, especially on social media platforms, suggests that far-reaching changes are taking place in scholarly communication and the geography of science. This dissertation provides integrated techniques and methods designed to address the information overload problem facing scholarly environments and to enhance the research process. There are four main contributions in this dissertation. First, this study identifies, quantifies, and analyzes international researchers’ dynamic scholarly information behaviors, activities, and needs, especially after the emergence of social media platforms. The findings based on qualitative and quantitative analysis report new scholarly patterns and reveals differences between researchers according to academic status and discipline. Second, this study mines massive scholarly datasets, models diverse multidimensional non-traditional web-based indicators (altmetrics), and evaluates and predicts scholarly and societal impact at various levels. The results address some of the limitations of traditional citation-based metrics and broaden the understanding and utilization of altmetrics. Third, this study recommends scholarly venues semantically related to researchers’ current interests. The results provide important up-to-the-minute signals that represent a closer reflection of research interests than post-publication usage-based metrics. Finally, this study develops a new scholarly framework by supporting the construction of online scholarly communities and bibliographies through reputation-based social collaboration, through the introduction of a collaborative, self-promoting system for users to advance their participation through analysis of the quality, timeliness and quantity of contributions. The framework improves the precision and quality of social reference management systems. By analyzing and modeling digital footprints, this dissertation provides a basis for tracking and documenting the impact of scholarship using new models that are more akin to reading breaking news than to watching a historical documentary made several years after the events it describes

Role of social networks in consulting engineers' collaborative information behaviour

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the role of social networks in the information behaviour of consulting engineers. Wilson’s (1999; 2000) encapsulating information behaviour definition, and the contribution other researchers made to it, was used to develop an information behaviour framework for the study. In an in depth literature review it was learnt that engineering work is about team work and that engineers rely on their personal knowledge and expertise, as well as the knowledge and expertise of other experts in the field. This was confirmed by the findings of the empirical study. Throughout the literature review it was shown that the interaction between elements in the context and the personal dimension gives rise to information needs, which in turn prompt certain information behaviour activities. Narrative inquiry, a relatively new information behaviour data collection and analysis technique, guided the study. Fifteen consulting engineers who are involved in building projects participated in the study. Two chapters were dedicated to data analysis where the engineers’ stories of an engineering project were re-storied to learn more about the context of engineering work and how engineers operate. The findings revealed that the team members of projects involving consulting engineers come from different organisations. It was found that consulting engineers collaboratively seek, gather, use, communicate and share information. Interdependency emerged as a prominent element in the effective structures of consulting engineers’ personal dimension and evidently plays an important role in collaborative information behaviour in consulting engineers’ team work. It serves as a contributing factor in the natural forming of their social networks, which proved to be important sources of engineering information. The findings contributed to the refinement of the information behaviour framework developed for the purpose of this study. The framework graphically illustrates consulting engineers’ information behaviour. This study contributes to an understanding of the important role social networks play in consulting engineers’ successful accomplishment of engineering projects in everyday lifeInformation ScienceD.Litt. et Phil. (Information Science