Library and Information Science Commons^™

Chat’S Positive Side, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

"I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO REGRETS about enhancing our reference services through chat." "It's been a smooth and successful expansion of our existing reference service." "It's so successful we've moved from being a pilot project to an ongoing service." These are the positive voices of virtual reference, the librarians who feel chat reference is now an integral part of their library. After giving time in my column last month to negative views ("Rethinking Virtual Reference," LJ 11/1/04, p. 34), this month I've asked librarians in notable virtual reference services to tell their stories.

The Journals Revolution: A Primer, Carol Tenopir, Carol Montgomery, Michael Mabe

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Virtual Reference, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Virtual reference services seem a natural extension of libraries digital collections and the emphasis on access to the library anytime, anywhere. If patrons use the library from home, it makes sense to provide them with person-to-person online reference. The Library of Congress (LC), OCLC, and several large library systems have developed and promoted virtual reference services, which are now offered by thousands of libraries. Recently, however, some virtual reference pioneers are questioning the cost benefits of online reference and recommending caution. This article shares some negatives and alternatives to online reference chatting.

Searching On The Run, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

With wireless connectivity and small laptop computers, people are no longer tied to the desktop for online searching. Handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) offer even greater portability. So far, the most common uses of PDAs are as calendars and address books, or to interface with a laptop or desktop machine. More advanced PDAs, like Research in Motion's BlackBerry Wireless Handheld[TM], as well as new versions of the Palm PC, add entail, paging, a telephone, and limited Internet surfing. Hard-to-read screen displays and small keyboards (or no keyboard) have been a barrier to using PDAs for online searching and reading. As …

Eric’S Extreme Makeover, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

ERIC, ONE OF THE VERY FIRST online bibliographic databases, was started in 1966---when subject-themed clearinghouses were established to gather, index, and input bibliographic information and make available journal articles and gray literature. The ERIC database has been a favorite resource ever since and, with over a million records, is the largest education database.

But like many baby boomers, ERIC is now undergoing a dramatic facelift. The new ERIC (which now stands for Education Resources Information Center, instead of educational) is being unveiled this month.

Open Access Alternatives, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Open access publishing is a hot topic today. But open access publishing can have many different definitions, and pros and cons vary with the definitions. Open access publishing is especially attractive to companies and small colleges or universities that are likely to have many more readers than authors. A downside is that a membership fee sounds suspiciously like a subscription fee. Some big universities worry that their fees are an unfair burden, forcing them to pay for open access by others. Some are concerned that author fees will come out of the library budget. Scientists in developing countries worry that …

E-Resources In Tough Times, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Librarians must get the most for their money and look to technology for new solutions. Several respondents think poor budgets mean more reliance on online databases and electronic full texts with less purchase of print. Companies that produce both media are likely to continue as long as there is a market for both, but they are gearing up for the time when electronic journals and e-reference materials predominate. Companies that market electronic products to libraries worry that budget woes will make new products a hard sell and place old products under renewed scrutiny. For the second year in a row, …

An Evidence-Based Assessment Of The "Author Pays" Model, Donald W. King, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much discussion of author payments as a means to Open Access lacks consideration of evidence on their potential impact on the scholarly journal system. Our recent work perhaps sheds new light on both favourable and unfavourable aspects of this option.

We emphasize the diversity of communication communities among authors, and between the authors and the extensive non-author reading community. We also take a broad system perspective, given that the author payment model will potentially impact not only authors but also, for example, R&D funders, university and other organization staff and library budgets, publishers, and readers. This raises several issues. Who …

The Information Playground: Usage Data Improves, Google Gets Involved, Reference Ebooks Take Off, Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, William Robinson

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

CSA has expanded its social science and humanities offerings. Communication Abstracts from SAGE publications is now online, and new full-text SAGE collections in education and psychology are planned for release in 2004.

Spying On Search Strategies, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Only the most dedicated super-searchers are motivated to learn and control command systems, like DialogClassic, that rely on the user to input complex search strategies. Infrequent searchers and most end users choose interfaces that do some of the work for them and make the search process appear easy. However, the easier a good interface seems to be, the more complex the system underlying it must be. Google is popular not only because of its simple dialog-box interface but because users are typically satisfied with their results. This article compares and contrasts different ways to get search results and focuses on …

Interface, Spring 2004, School Of Information Sciences

Interface Newsletter

The last few months have been busy ones for SIS. Since the first of the year, we’ve experienced an Academic Program Review, searched for a new faculty member, participated in a search for a permanent Dean of the College of Communication and Information, and, through the generous assistance of the Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Corporate Awards Program, we cosponsored a lecture by Dr. Michael Buckland.

We should have a new College dean in place when you read the next Interface. Four excellent candidates came to campus for two-day interviews that involved faculty, staff and students from every unit in …

Is Google The Competition?, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

LIBRARIANS, PUBLISHERS, and aggregators alike often call Google their main competitor. Google, or similar web search engines, is the information finding tool of first choice for many users--far ahead of proprietary online services or libraries and light years ahead of print sources.

The 2004 annual meeting of NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services) asked who would win the "battle for mindshare" in the year 2010. Will libraries, A&I (abstracting and indexing) services, and traditional publishers still exist, or will Google become the only information resource?

Searching Through Embedded Databases, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

THE DAY OF THE standalone database may be numbered. Database searching is now embedded in the latest version of Microsoft Office software, so the process of looking for information is interwoven into writing a report or creating a presentation. Some corporate librarians wonder how this will affect their role.

Online Scholarly Journals: How Many?, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

IT SHOULD BE EASY to determine the exact number of scholarly journals that are available online. Surprisingly, it is a challenge. Even how many scholarly journals are published in print isn't easy to calculate. Coming up with these numbers is a tale that information specialists will appreciate.

Electronic Journals, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Scholarly journals, which include substantive research articles and other materials,including letters to the editor,book reviews,and announcements of meetings, trace their origins back to 1665,with Les Journal des Scavans (trans.,“Journal of the experts”) in Paris and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in London. These journals developed to share scientific discoveries among interested parties and to establish who was first to have made a given discovery or to have advanced a given theory.

Peer review is an important part of publication in scholarly journals. It is a system whereby scholars who are experts in the same field as the author …

Scholarly Journal And Digital Database Pricing: Threat Or Opportunity?, Donald W. King, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

What Makes Good Web-Based Instruction?, Carol Tenopir, Beverly Simmons

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Use Of Electronic Science Journals In The Undergraduate Curriculum: An Observational Study, Carol Tenopir, Peiling Wang, Richard Pollard, Yan Zhang, Beverly Simmons

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Phase 2 of a 2-phase project funded by the NSF- National Science Digital Library Project observed undergraduate and graduate engineering, chemistry, and physics students and faculty while they searched the ScienceDirect e-journals system for scholarly science journal articles for simulated class-related assignments. Think-aloud protocol was used to capture affective and cognitive state information, while online monitoring provided an automatic log of interactions with the system. Pre- and post-search questionnaires and a learning style test provided additional data. Preliminary analysis shows differences in search patterns among undergraduates, graduates, and faculty. All groups used basic search functions the most. Graduate students on …