Searching for electronic journal articles to support academic tasks. A case study of the use of the Finnish National Electronic Library (FinELib

Abstract Introduction. We analyse how academic status and discipline influence the major search methods used b

An investigation of digital scholarship and disciplinary culture in Oman

The purpose of this study is to investigate disciplinary differences in the use of networked information for research and scholarly communication at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. The study produced quantitative data on how and why academics within different disciplines utilise networked information either made available internally through the university library, or externally through services accessed by the Internet. A questionnaire survey was conducted with academic staff at Sultan Qaboos University. Statistical analysis found a number of significant differences between respondents in the science disciplines and those in the social sciences and humanities with regard to their use of, and attitudes towards, digital information services. While respondents from science disciplines show overall longer and more frequent use of networked information, respondents from humanities and social sciences indicated more positive attitudes toward library networked services.The Arab country context presents a challenge in determining the degree to which results can be extrapolated to other environments, in that disciplines are also divided by language. Science disciplines teach in English, and the social science and humanities in Arabic.While similar studies have been undertaken in developed countries, this study is an attempt to establish some data for a developing Arab country

O uso dos periódicos electrónicos nas instituições do ensino superior público em Portugal

O presente artigo procura analisar a utilização dos periódicos científicos electrónicos nas instituições do ensino superior público portuguesas, com o objectivo de compreender o nível de conhecimento que a comunidade académica tem relativamente à existência e disponibilidade destes periódicos, conhecer práticas e frequência do seu uso, aferir vantagens e desvantagens e perceber as principais consequências, benefícios e preocupações que estes periódicos trouxeram também aos técnicos de biblioteca e documentação. Para tal foi realizado um inquérito online entre Maio e Junho de 2008, dirigido aos utilizadores de 34 instituições de ensino superior público, e através do qual foram obtidas 3.357 respostas completas. Os resultados indicam que a utilização destes periódicos está a aumentar e que é feita de uma forma rotineira por grande parte da comunidade académica nacional, sobretudo docentes que os utilizam muito frequentemente nas suas pesquisas e para preparação das suas aulas. Todavia, a cultura do impresso está ainda muito enraizada. Verificou-se ainda a necessidade de uma maior divulgação e até formação no uso destes recursos, sobretudo dos Alunos de 1.º ciclo que ou desconhecem por completo a sua existência ou afirmam não os saber usar. O acesso a qualquer hora e a partir de qualquer local são os aspectos mais apreciados. As principais dificuldades são o acesso a números antigos e a dificuldade de leitura no monitor. Questões como a preservação e o acesso perpétuo são questões preocupantes especialmente para os técnicos de biblioteca e documentação. *****ABSTRACT***** This article analyzes the use of electronic scientific journals in Portuguese public higher education institutions, having some purposes such as: to understand the level of knowledge that the academic community has regarding the existence and availability of these journals; to get acquainted with the practices and frequency of its use; to verify advantages, disadvantages, benefits and concerns that these journals brought to the technical library and documentation personnel. An online survey was conducted between May and June 2008, addressed to users of 34 public higher education institutions. It were obtained 3.357 complete answers. The results indicate that the use of these journals is increasing and it is done in a routine way by much of the national academic community, especially teachers who use them, very often, in their research and to prepare their lessons. However, print culture is still very deep-rooted. It was clear that it’s needed a greater dissemination and training regarding the use of these resources, especially among the first cycle students, who are either completely unaware of its existence or claim not to know how to use these same resources. Access at any time and from any place is the most appreciated. The difficulty of access to old numbers and the difficulty of reading on screen the main difficulties. Issues such as the preservation and the perpetual access to these journals are difficult to handle, especially by the technical library and documentation personnel

Scholarly article seeking, reading, and use: a continuing evolution from print to electronic in the sciences and social sciences

Electronic journals are now the norm for accessing and reading scholarly articles. This article examines scholarly article reading patterns by faculty in five US universities in 2012. Selected findings are also compared to some general trends from studies conducted periodically since 1977. In the 2012 survey, over threequarters (76%) of the scholarly readings were obtained through electronic means and just over half (51%) of readings were read on a screen rather than from a print source or being printed out. Readings from library sources are overwhelmingly from e-sources. The average number of articles read per month was 20.66, with most articles read by the medical and other sciences, and on average each article was read for 32 minutes

Keeping Up With the Law: Investigating Lawyers’ Monitoring Behaviour

Purpose - We wanted to provide an enriched understanding of how lawyers keep up-to-date with legal developments. Maintaining awareness of developments in an area (known as ‘monitoring’) is an important aspect of professional’s information work. This is particularly true for lawyers, who are expected to keep up-to-date with legal developments on an on-going basis. Design/methodology/approach - We wanted to provide an enriched understanding of how lawyers keep up-to-date with legal developments. Maintaining awareness of developments in an area (known as ‘monitoring’) is an important aspect of professional’s information work. This is particularly true for lawyers, who are expected to keep up-to-date with legal developments on an on-going basis. Findings - The lawyers mostly used electronic resources (particularly e-mail alerts and an electronic tool that alerted them to changes in website content), alongside interpersonal sources such as colleagues, customers and professional contacts. Printed media such as journals and newspapers were used more rarely and usually to complement electronic and person-based resources. A number of factors were found to influence choice. These included situational relevance, presentation, utility and trustworthiness, the speed of content acquisition, and interpretation facilitated by the resource. Originality/value - Our findings enrich our understanding of lawyers’ monitoring behaviour, which has so far received little direct research attention. Our design suggestions have the potential to feed into the design of new and improvement of existing digital current awareness resources. Our findings have the potential to act as ‘success criteria’ by which these resources can be evaluated from a user-centred perspective

O uso de periódicos científicos electrónicos nas instituições do ensino superior público em Portugal

Tese de mestrado em Ciências da Documentação e Informação apresentada à Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, 2008A introdução das novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação provocou alterações profundas na comunicação científica. A disponibilização electrónica dos periódicos científicos teve consequências inevitáveis na forma de aceder ao conhecimento por parte de toda a comunidade académica, bem como nos seus hábitos de pesquisa. É neste contexto que surge o presente estudo que procura analisar a utilização dos periódicos científicos electrónicos nas instituições do ensino superior público portuguesas, com o objectivo de compreender o nível de conhecimento que a comunidade académica tem relativamente à existência e disponibilidade destes periódicos, conhecer práticas e frequência do seu uso, aferir vantagens e desvantagens e perceber as principais consequências, benefícios e preocupações que estes periódicos trouxeram também aos técnicos de biblioteca e documentação. Para tal foi realizado um inquérito online entre Maio e Junho de 2008, dirigido aos utilizadores de 34 instituições de ensino superior público, e através do qual foram obtidas 3.357 respostas completas. Os resultados indicam que a utilização destes periódicos está a aumentar e que é feita de uma forma rotineira por grande parte da comunidade académica nacional, sobretudo docentes que os utilizam muito frequentemente nas suas pesquisas e para preparação das suas aulas. Todavia, a cultura do impresso está ainda muito enraizada. Ficou clara a necessidade de uma maior divulgação e até formação no uso destes recursos, sobretudo dos Alunos de 1.º ciclo que ou desconhecem por completo a sua existência ou afirmam não os saber usar. O acesso a qualquer hora e a partir de qualquer local são os aspectos mais apreciados. A dificuldade de acesso a números antigos e a dificuldade de leitura no monitor as principais dificuldades. Questões como a preservação e o acesso perpétuo são questões preocupantes especialmente para os técnicos de biblioteca e documentação.The introduction of new information and communication technologies caused profound changes in communication science. The availability of electronic scientific journals had inevitable consequences in the way academic community have access to knowledge and in their search habits, as well. In this context, this study analyzes the use of electronic scientific journals in Portuguese public higher education institutions, having some purposes such as: to understand the level of knowledge that the academic community has regarding the existence and availability of these journals; to get acquainted with the practices and frequency of its use; to verify advantages, disadvantages, benefits and concerns that these journals brought to the technical library and documentation personnel. An online survey was conducted between May and June 2008, addressed to users of 34 public higher education institutions. It were obtained 3.357 complete answers. The results indicate that the use of these journals is increasing and it is done in a routine way by much of the national academic community, especially teachers who use them, very often, in their research and to prepare their lessons. However, print culture is still very deep-rooted. It was clear that it's needed a greater dissemination and training regarding the use of these resources, especially among the first cycle students, who are either completely unaware of ts existence or claim not to know how to use these same resources. Access at any time and from any place is the most appreciated. The difficulty of access to old numbers and the difficulty of reading on screen the main difficulties. Issues such as the preservation and the perpetual access to these journals are difficult to handle, especially by the technical library and documentation personnel

When are readership counts as useful as citation counts? Scopus versus Mendeley for LIS journals

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Association for Information Science and Technology in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology on 08/01/2015, available online: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23369 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.In theory, articles can attract readers on the social reference sharing site Mendeley before they can attract citations, so Mendeley altmetrics could provide early indications of article impact. This article investigates the influence of time on the number of Mendeley readers of an article through a theoretical discussion and an investigation into the relationship between counts of readers of, and citations to, 4 general library and information science (LIS) journals. For this discipline, it takes about 7 years for articles to attract as many Scopus citations as Mendeley readers, and after this the Spearman correlation between readers and citers is stable at about 0.6 for all years. This suggests that Mendeley readership counts may be useful impact indicators for both newer and older articles. The lack of dates for individual Mendeley article readers and an unknown bias toward more recent articles mean that readership data should be normalized individually by year, however, before making any comparisons between articles published in different years

AWARENESS AND USAGE OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION RESOURCES AMONG POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA

The study aims at investigating the awareness and usage of electronic information resources among postgraduate students of library and information science in Southern Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The census sampling technique was adopted for this study. Thus, the entire population of three hundred and seventy-five (375) postgraduate students of library and information science in Southern Nigeria were used as the sample for this study. The questionnaire tagged: Awareness and Usage of Electronic Information Resources by Postgraduate Students of Library and Information Science Questionnaire (AUEIRPSLISQ) was used as instrument for data collection. Four research questions were answered and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The simple percent statistical tool was used to answer the research questions and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMCC) for testing the hypotheses. The results obtained revealed that postgraduate students of library and information science are quite aware and highly use electronic information resources. The study also reported that postgraduate LIS students are skilled in the use of electronic information resources. Based on the findings the study concluded that electronic information resources are essential tools for empowering postgraduate students of library and information science in Southern Nigeria

AWARENESS AND USAGE OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION RESOURCES AMONG POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA

The study aims at investigating the awareness and usage of electronic information resources among postgraduate students of library and information science in Southern Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The census sampling technique was adopted for this study. Thus, the entire population of three hundred and seventy-five (375) postgraduate students of library and information science in Southern Nigeria were used as the sample for this study. The questionnaire tagged: Awareness and Usage of Electronic Information Resources by Postgraduate Students of Library and Information Science Questionnaire (AUEIRPSLISQ) was used as instrument for data collection. Four research questions were answered and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The simple percent statistical tool was used to answer the research questions and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMCC) for testing the hypotheses. The results obtained revealed that postgraduate students of library and information science are quite aware and highly use electronic information resources. The study also reported that postgraduate LIS students are skilled in the use of electronic information resources. Based on the findings the study concluded that electronic information resources are essential tools for empowering postgraduate students of library and information science in Southern Nigeria