Text analysis has been widely used to identify research trends in many disciplines. However, little has been written about using this method to discover a department's research trends and faculty research interests in the library setting. This study examined 107 faculty publications from the School of Communication at the University of Houston. It analyzed word and phrase frequencies from titles and abstracts using Voyant tools. The analysis was performed on both the department level and the individual faculty level. This article demonstrates a new way for librarians to understand faculty research. The method can be replicated by subject librarians to analyze their own departments.
Inspired by Gao’s text analysis of communication studies faculty, this study looks at the trends from 176 faculty publications from the criminal justice department at the University of Nevada, Reno. Criminal justice faculty publications are missing from library science text analysis literature. This study uses Voyant and NVivo 12 to analyze words and phrases from titles and abstracts to identify research interests. Voyant itself was found to be sufficient and identified specific research trends such as organizational commitment, amber alerts, and death qualification. This study can assist liaison librarians in selecting between these two tools based on their needs.
Knowledge of diverse and multilingual undergraduate/graduate teacher education students' reading experiences and awareness of diverse children's literature can inform academic librarians' book collection and instruction. Study includes 1) education student survey (n = 180) focused on identity and reading; and 2) survey of education students (n = 20) who participated in diverse children's book library class sessions. Findings include respondents who learn about diverse and bilingual books are likely to share them with children; and respondents who enjoyed specific books as children are likely to share those same books with children. Academic library instructional role around children's books is also discussed.
This study aims to assess the information literacy skills of a sample of undergraduate teacher education students and explore their perceptions about those skills. Participants completed iSkills, an online assessment from the Educational Testing Service aligned with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Standards, and a subsample participated in focus-group discussions regarding their test experience and perceptions of information literacy. This article focuses on the qualitative findings from these discussions. Participants were unfamiliar with the term “information literacy” but see it as essential to their success and that of their future students, especially in the context of a diverse, urban school district.
A 2017 citation study looked at four scholarly anthropology journals in order to evaluate current research trends. This study examined the following journals: Current Anthropology, the American Anthropologist, the American Ethnologist, and the Journal of Anthropological Research. The results showed an average of 89.9 citations per article, which is a large increase over previous studies. The breakdown by the largest two categories showed 48.1% citations to total books, compared to 41.2% for scholarly journals. All other source types of citations comprised only 10.7% of total citations. These results were compared to a 2005 study by William Robinson and Paul Posten of the same four journals from 1999.
There is limited qualitative research on the information-seeking self-efficacy (SE) of library and information science (LIS) graduate students. This study examines graduating LIS students’ experiences with information seeking, including experiences in the LIS program that led to increased levels of information-seeking SE and specific recollections of moments when SE increased. Many students identified similar factors as key to developing SE, including education-related assignments, library work experience, LIS internships, and specific LIS coursework. Because of the small sample size, further research would help to identify additional factors that promote LIS students’ information-seeking SE.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in the news frequently in the past few years. It seems as though every new product has some kind of “AI” at its core. Even library conferences seem overtaken b...
This study identifies, describes, and analyzes the most highly cited works in the urban sociology literature to investigate empirically the subfield’s intellectual foundations, its future research directions, and its relationship to the broader discipline of sociology. The findings show that these landmark publications are more likely to be authored by United States based scholars, study cities in the United States, propose new concepts, and address the topic of racial inequality. They include works of classical sociology, traditional urban sociology, and new urban sociology. This study concludes that the Chicago School’s legacy continues to shape contemporary urban sociology as the specialty expands in interdisciplinary directions.
When social work students graduate and move into their professional practice, they also move into a vastly different information landscape than that of the academic environment. In order to better understand the use of evidence-based practice (EBP) and information sources in practice, the authors performed a national survey of social workers. This survey provides a snapshot of how frequently social workers employ EBP, their use of research articles and other information resources, and their prior library instruction. The researchers make recommendations for increased consideration of
Digital privacy has been a significant topic in librarianship for the past few years, but it’s easy to get bogged down with complex technical discussions. For librarians just starting to reexamine ...
The necessity of preservice teachers' familiarity with children's literature remains highly significant, while their methods for achieving this familiarity are expanding. This research assessed the selection and acquisition methods of preservice teachers and their faculty. Researchers identified five children's literature courses being taught during the fall 2017 semester and interviewed faculty members, reviewed course syllabi, and surveyed enrolled students. The data collected suggests that preservice teachers are primarily interested in quickly and easily acquiring titles and are often seeking specific titles. Suggestions for adjustments to outreach methods and organization of the children's literature collection are given.
AbstractCollection development analysis in academic libraries typically involves collection-centered and user-centered methods. These approaches focus on building collections that help students wit...
Research data management (RDM) skills are vital yet often untaught in graduate programs, especially in the social sciences. In this article, the authors present a case study of how a research data librarian and an education librarian partnered to provide targeted RDM instruction for a previously unconsidered student group: education doctoral students. They discuss the design, development, and implementation of this focused RDM support. Assessment data from a workshop and in-class sessions are presented and contextualized. From this information, the authors offer practical suggestions that other social science librarians can use to create similar workshops at their institutions.
What might be the digital equivalent of walking by the library on your way to class?Library buildings have traditionally been considered gems on college campuses: They are usually a centrally locat...
Previous research has mostly focused on the demographic and academic correlates of library anxiety. This study focused on the "library anxiety" and "emotion perception" of students, with the objective of examining the relationship between these two concepts. In total, 279 self-reporting questionnaires were used for analysis. The results confirmed the existence of the phenomenon of library anxiety, with these students being more anxious regarding the "user education" and "user knowledge" factors. They showed greater skills of emotion perception. A negatively significant relationship appeared between library anxiety and emotion perception. The results suggest that user education and emotion perception training programs should be developed to overcome students' problems.
This study asks whether criminal justice students are more or less likely to utilize library resources to complete research assignments compared to their peers, and subsequently, whether they perceive the effectiveness of those resources differently. To do so, survey data from nearly 300 students from a mid-sized university in the northeastern United States are analyzed. The results indicate that criminal justice students are not more or less likely to utilize resources from the university library compared to their peers but that criminal justice students feel that services from librarians are less effective than do non-criminal justice students.
While undergraduate students may be able to find appropriate scholarly sources, they often struggle to use those sources when writing. This study aimed to improve students’ writing by targeting one specific skill: synthesis, or the ability to integrate multiple sources. Students in a psychology course viewed a video tutorial prior to writing an introductory literature review. Those who viewed the tutorial were more likely to cite two or more sources per paragraph compared to those who did not view it. Students’ survey responses also indicated that they found the tutorial helpful, suggesting it has promise as an instructional tool.
For better or worse, 2016 was an exceptional year with respect to information literacy. There were monumental elections and referendums, global financial and refugee crises, and quite a few politic...
There is always a bit of controversy when libraries experiment with adopting new technology into the services they offer. For example, some people considered microfiche a threat to books and the library’s role as a repository. Later, adding VHS tapes of popular movies to a circulating collection drew skepticism and questions as to whether this was the library’s swan song. Offering Internet access didn’t face too much resistance, but loaning out laptops and tablets raised assumptions about the library’s priorities in terms of growing book collections versus services. Because it can usuallymake the argument that there are patrons in its community that directly benefit from these additions, the public library may face less resistance as it adopts new technology-oriented services. The academic library, however, is traditionally thought to exist in order to provide support for its university’s mission and curriculum by providing access to stored information. The lens of academia is a filter through which university libraries pass their purchasing decisions, and this is certainly true for one of the next disruptive technologies: three-dimensional (3D) printing. 3D printing has been available for years, but it wasn’t until recently that the costs decreased as general interest gained momentum. This was mainly due to the rise in the “maker culture,” which is a do-it-yourself approach to tinkering and creating objects through open-source software and hardware. Different printers use different materials, but the more accessible 3D printers involve stacking thin, heated layers of plastic. The schematics for the objects are first loaded into the printer via design software, and the end result is almost as vast as the user’s imagination. Not everyone has been a supporter of the 3D printing in libraries. The most recognized opposition came from a blog post by Hugh Rundle (2013) titled “Mission Creep—A3DPrinterWillNot SaveYour Library.” Rundle blasts the idea of 3Dprinters in libraries, saying that they have nothing to dowith the core business of libraries. A 3D printer in the library is a symbol of failure and a sign of wildly inappropriate technolust. He believes that 3D printing is a manufacturing service that does not adhere to information storage and retrieval. He likens it to adding laundry services, or starting to lend guns because the library has books about firearms. Rundle’s
For several years, there has been a significant amount of discussion about the impact of the Internet on search behavior. Researchers have been trying to understand how “the Millennials” and digita...
