Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Books Are Back!, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

MORE THAN 1000 LIBRARIANS, publishers, and vendors jammed into the 25th annual Charleston Conference in South Carolina, November 2-5. Created by College of Charleston librarian Katina Strauch, the meeting brings together everyone in serials and acquisitions.

This year several speakers focused on book collections--print-on-paper books housed in bricks and mortar. Add in the discussions on ebooks and you could feel the back-to-book backlash.

Complex Syntax Lives On, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

ALL THE TALK OF SIMPLISTIC TEXTBOX interfaces as the goal leaves the impression that there is no need to know how to use special characters or syntax, that all systems are being dumbed down. Even library school students groan when they are first told to learn the complex commands of an "old-fashioned" power system like Dialog. They expect systems where the complexity is behind the scenes and everything is done for them. Despite these new attitudes, commands and complex syntax are still needed in online searching, even on the web.

Vendors And Search Engines, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

AT FIRST IT SEEMED INEVITABLE that free search engines would compete with fee-based online services. Now they work together.

Reference Database Usage Statistics 2004-2005, Andree J. Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Statistics on the use of online reference databases at the University of Rhode Island during the period from July 2004 through June 2005. Includes COUNTER-compliant data on sessions, searches, turnaways, full text articles downloaded, cost per search, and other metrics.

The Communication Studies Researcher And The Communication Studies Indexes, David C. Tyler, Signe Swanson, Susan M. Leach

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The existence of widely available large, multi-subject, online databases calls into question the necessity for small, discipline-specific indexes to support research. This study attempts to determine whether the online Communication Studies indexes provide access to the journal literature that researchers in the field actually cite and whether, where the current journal literature is concerned, that access is in any way superior to that provided by large, multi-subject, online indexes.

Use And Satisfaction Of Library Resources And Services By Hospitality Patrons: An Exploratory Study, Faye Hall Jackson, Heidi Sung, Lateka Grays, Joyce K. Thornton

Library Faculty Publications

A great challenge for present day libraries is to move from the thought process of being a destination location with a captive audience to positioning its services to meet the needs of its users. This paper explores the frequency of library use and satisfaction of library resources and/or services by hospitality education patrons. Using data collected with patrons (N=368) of five Hospitality Management programs across the country, the study found significant differences in library access, use, and satisfaction based on gender, academic status, and international versus non-international patrons.