Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Design Engineers And Technical Professionals At Work: Observing Information Usage In The Workplace, Suzie Allard, Kenneth Levine, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

This exploratory study examines how design engineers and technical professionals (hereafter referred to as engineers) in innovative high-tech firms in the United States and India use information in their daily work activities including research, development, and management. The researchers used naturalistic observation to conduct a series of daylong workplace observations with 103 engineers engaged in product design and testing in four U.S.- and two India-based firms. A key finding is that engineers spend about one fourth of their day engaged in some type of information event, which was somewhat lower than the percentage identified in previous research. The explanation may …

Electronic Journals And Changes In Scholarly Article Seeking And Reading Patterns, Carol Tenopir, Donald W. King

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

A recent article by James Evans in Science (Evans 2008) is being widely discussed in the science and publishing communities. Evans' in-depth research on citations in over 34 million articles and how online availability affects citing patterns, found that the more issues of a journal that are available online, the fewer numbers of articles in that journal are cited. If the journal is available for free online, it is cited even less. Evans attributes this phenomenon to more searching and less browsing (which he feels eliminates marginally relevant articles that may have been found by browsing) and the ability …

Scenes From A Database., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

H.W. Wilson's new Cinema Image Gallery (CIG), along with some other excellent resources, will help searchers find all kinds of information about the motion picture industry.

Are Electronic Journals Good For Science?, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Most people accept the notion that e-journals, through library subscriptions or open access, are good for science. They save readers time in tracking down articles and help them identify relevant materials from a wide range of journal titles. However, the academic world was buzzing recently over a study that challenged this notion.

Science Information Without Borders., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Online resources are critical to the concept of "libraries without borders," the theme of the 2008 World Library and Information Congress at the 74th International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) general conference, held in August in Québec City.

Dialog Finds A New Home., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

THE BIGGEST INDUSTRY NEWS this summer was the announcement that proQuest had acquired Dialog from Thomson Reuters. Dialog was beginning to look like an unwelcome stepchild as new strategies by Thomson Reuters were moving the firm away from traditional databases and library markets. ProQuest, by contrast, has a solid foundation in both areas and has been aggressively building with new acquisitions and products.

Still, the news came as a surprise to most of us, as the change happened remarkably fast--rarely is a major acquisition rumored, announced, and completed all within a month.

Dialog, the grandfather of online database systems that …

The Past Catches Up., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

IF YOU WERE IN LIBRARY SCHOOL anytime during the last 40 years, you are probably familiar with F.W. Lancaster and his books on indexing, online searching, or paperless information systems. I recently reread the first online searching textbook ever written, while preparing a Library Trends article (Spring/Summer 2008) in tribute to Lancaster. The book, Information Retrieval On-Line (Melville), by Lancaster and Emily Fayen, appeared in 1973 when only a few librarians and subject specialists were tackling the new world of online databases.

Seru: A Licensing Advance., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

SERU (Shared E-Resources Understanding) is a document of understanding between libraries and publishers that avoids the time, effort, and expense of license negotiation, relying instead on a purchase order and copyright law.

Information With A Twist: Vendors Keep The Party Going With Web 2.0, Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, Jill E. Grogg

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies led the social whirl of the information industry. Publishers and librarians tried to keep their products and services relevant by mixing authoritative content with user involvement, but that wasn't enough. Enhancing interfaces, adding new forms of content, and making strategic acquisitions--all are necessary to ensure that the information industry party continues.

New Order, New Thinking., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Digital users identify the ideas that they think are important. Because we cannot tell what will be interesting in the future, he advised the audience to include everything and let users "slice through it all." [...]he said, it "costs more to exclude than to include." Today's users feel they have a right to participate, including adding tags and notes to historical photo collections and comments and book reviews in the library catalog, providing user-generated photos or captions/descriptions to digital libraries, and employing the multiple style templates available to users to customize the look of library database interfaces (also known as …

A Cross-Cultural And Bilingual Experience In Lis Education--A Case Study, Edwin Cortez, Robert Sandusky, Simon Aristeguieta-Trillos

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper describes a case study involving the synchronous delivery of portions of an undergraduate course on web technologies taught across three campuses and in the context of a multicultural learning environment. The case study focuses on issues around internationalization and localization, one portion of the course where students learn techniques for developing Web content that supports multiple locales, languages, and written scripts. Another important component of the case study presentation will report student experiences in engaging in collaborative work using an array of synchronous technologies such as teleconferencing; synchronous multi-modal virtual meeting rooms and the like. This portion of …

Web Widgets Help Searchers., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Widgets are interactive, single-purpose applications for displaying and/or updating information. Libraries and others in a subscribing institution can now build custom ProQuest search widgets from a template and incorporate them directly into any web page.

Online Systems For Information Access And Retrieval, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

A Global Information World., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

The users who create and edit topical Wikipedia articles (e.g., "Miss Piggy") or subject-focused Wikia articles (e.g., all things Muppets related) form stronger community bonds than those who are just readers. While major search engines offer video search, Kassel cited some new to me, including TeacherTube ("geared toward teachers and students for community sharing for instructional videos") and Vidipedia ("structured like Wikipedia but with video content"). David Ball, university librarian, Bournemouth University, UK, said academic libraries face obstacles when virtual learning environments (VLEs) become "the primary means of interaction between students and universities."

Ebooks Arrive., Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

The programs at two recent conferences (the Charleston Conference and London Online) confirm that ebooks have established themselves in libraries. While the trade and consumer book markets still struggle to find an affordable and compelling ebook reader, library users have embraced the ebooks connected to the library e-collection and accessible via the PC or laptop they typically use.

Viewing And Reading Behaviour In A Virtual Environment: The Full-Text Download And What Can Be Read Into It, David Nicholas, Paul Huntington, Hamid R. Jamali, Ian Rowlands, Tom Dobrowolski, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article aims to focus on usage data in respect to full-text downloads of journal articles, which is considered an important usage (satisfaction) metric by librarians and publishers. The purpose is to evaluate the evidence regarding full-text viewing by pooling together data on the full-text viewing of tens of thousands of users studied as part of a number of investigations of e-journal databases conducted during the Virtual Scholar research programme.

Rural Library Professionals As Change Agents In The 21st Century: Integrating Information Technology Competencies In The Southern And Central Appalachian Region (Itrl), Bharat Mehra, K. Black, V. Singh

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Rural Library Professionals as Change Agents in the 21st Century: Integrating Information Technology Competencies in the Southern and Central Appalachian Region (ITRL) ($567,660). Institute of Museum and Library Services, Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, October 2009 – September 2012. Principal Investigators: B. Mehra, K. Black, and V. Singh. Project Partners: Clinch-Powell Regional Library (Clinton, Tennessee: S. Simmons, Director), Nolichucky Regional Library (Morristown, Tennessee: D. Reynolds, Director), Sevier County Public Library System (Sevierville, Tennessee: K. C. Williams, System Director), and the Watauga Regional Library (Johnson City, Tennessee: N. Renfro, Director).