48,949 research outputs found
Impact measures for libraries and information services
PURPOSE - To demonstrate the importance of impact / outcome research in libraries.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH - The paper gives an overview of purposes and methods used in impact research and illustrates this through project experiences.
FINDINGS - Various projects worldwide are trying to prove that use of library services can positively influence skills and competences, attitudes and behaviour of users. The benefits that users experience by using library services can be assessed in terms of knowledge gained, higher information literacy, higher academic or professional success, social inclusion, and increase in individual well-being.
RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS - The main problem of impact research is, that influences on an individual are manifold and that therefore it is difficult to trace changes and improvements back to the library. The paper shows methods that are tested and used at the present. More investigation is needed to identify methods that could be used to show a library’s overall impact or to develop measures that would permit benchmarking between institutions.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS - The paper shows practical examples of impact assessment, covering “soft” methods like surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation and quantitative methods like tests, analysis of publications, or usage data.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE - The paper acquaints libraries with a topic that is not yet well known and, by showing practical examples, demonstrates how libraries can attempt to assess their impact
Networks of reader and country status: An analysis of Mendeley reader statistics
The number of papers published in journals indexed by the Web of Science core
collection is steadily increasing. In recent years, nearly two million new
papers were published each year; somewhat more than one million papers when
primary research papers are considered only (articles and reviews are the
document types where primary research is usually reported or reviewed).
However, who reads these papers? More precisely, which groups of researchers
from which (self-assigned) scientific disciplines and countries are reading
these papers? Is it possible to visualize readership patterns for certain
countries, scientific disciplines, or academic status groups? One popular
method to answer these questions is a network analysis. In this study, we
analyze Mendeley readership data of a set of 1,133,224 articles and 64,960
reviews with publication year 2012 to generate three different kinds of
networks: (1) The network based on disciplinary affiliations of Mendeley
readers contains four groups: (i) biology, (ii) social science and humanities
(including relevant computer science), (iii) bio-medical sciences, and (iv)
natural science and engineering. In all four groups, the category with the
addition "miscellaneous" prevails. (2) The network of co-readers in terms of
professional status shows that a common interest in papers is mainly shared
among PhD students, Master's students, and postdocs. (3) The country network
focusses on global readership patterns: a group of 53 nations is identified as
core to the scientific enterprise, including Russia and China as well as two
thirds of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
countries.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures (also web-based startable), and 2 table
The IR has Two Faces: Positioning Institutional Repositories for Success
This article will describe ongoing efforts at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries to evolve the role of the institutional repository (IR) and to effectively position it within the context of the Libraries’ collections, research support, and scholarly communication services. A major component of this process is re-examining the fundamental aims of the IR and aligning it to the Libraries and the campus strategic goals. The authors situate UNLV Libraries’ experience within the context of the current literature to provide background and reasoning for our decision to pursue two, at times conflicting, aims for the IR: one for scholarly communication and another for research administration
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