Library and Information Science Commons^™

Tweeting Tennessee's Collections: Where Bots & Special Collections Meet, Meredith L. Hale

UT Libraries Faculty: Other Publications and Presentations

This project demonstrates how a Twitterbot can be used as an inclusive outreach initiative that breaks down the barriers between the Web and the reading room to share materials like postcards, music manuscripts, photographs, and cartoons with the public. Once in place, Twitterbots allow our physical materials to converge with the technical and social space of the Web. Twitterbots are ideal for busy professionals because they allow librarians to make meaningful impressions on users without requiring a large time investment. This poster covers my recent implementation of a digital collections bot (@UTKDigCollBot) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and provides …

Potential Effects Of Institutional Repositories On Nursing Research Dissemination, Sarah Jane Mcclung

Masters Theses

Institutional repositories (IRs) might be important tools for nursing faculty to utilize as they have the potential to improve research dissemination on a timely basis to the nursing community at large. This topic is worth investigating because the field of nursing has been struggling for many decades to facilitate the relationship between theory and methods by transferring the knowledge gained from nursing research to the approaches used in nursing practice. The recent focus on evidence-based practice in nursing education is proof of the field’s attempts at shrinking the information gap between nurse researcher and nurse clinician. Methods for dissemination have …

Perceptions Of Digital Libraries With Indigenous Knowledge: An Exploratory Study, Debra Lynn Capponi

Masters Theses

Interest in indigenous knowledge (IK) research has grown since the 1980s, and more recently the topic has drawn attention in information sciences research. At the same time, the evolution of electronic information and communication technologies (ICTs), most notably development of the Internet, has profoundly influenced information sciences research. This study explores perceptions of community members involved in the creation, development, and use of digital libraries with indigenous knowledge materials. Research methods used in data collection include a quantitative survey distributed to community members involved in the creation, development, and use of digital libraries with indigenous knowledge materials and qualitative analysis …

Metadata Plus: How Libraries Assure Discovery Of Locally Created Content, Melanie Feltner-Reichert, Marie Garrett, Linda L. Phillips

Other Library Publications and Works

This presentation offers a simple illustration of the ways html code, metadata tagging and other strategies enable content discovery. It contains examples that can be understood by anyone familiar with a bibliographic record. Librarians who grasp these concepts will be well-prepared to convince faculty that the library is both a safe and sustainable archive for their work, and that placing content with the library is more likely to lead to its discovery than any personal web space.

Volunteer Voices: Tennessee's Collaborative Digitization Program, Tiffani Conner, Ken Middleton, Melanie Feltner-Reichert, Andy Carter

UT Libraries Faculty: Peer-Reviewed Publications

This article provides an overview of Volunteer Voices, Tennessee’s statewide digitization program. The authors focus on the three-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant that provided the foundation for future growth of the digitization program. In addition to an overview of the content selection, metadata issues, software selection, digital preservation, and K-12 education emphasis of the grant project, the article includes a detailed description of the work done by the digitization and content specialists from across the state who selected and scanned items. The article concludes with a look at post-grant efforts to promote the sustainability …

Figure And Table Retrieval From Scholarly Journal Articles: User Needs For Teaching And Research, Robert J. Sandusky, Carol Tenopir, Margaret Casado

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper discusses user needs for a system that indexes tables and figures culled from scientific journal articles. These findings are taken from a comprehensive investigation into scientists' satisfaction with and use of a tables and figures retrieval prototype. Much previous research has examined the usability and features of digital libraries and other online retrieval systems that retrieve either full‐text of journal articles, traditional article‐level abstracts, or both. In contrast, this paper examines the needs of users directly searching for and accessing discrete journal article components – figures, tables, graphs, maps, and photographs – that have been individually indexed.

Online Issues Are Global, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

THE INFORMATION INDUSTRY is international. With major English-language online publishers based in the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada (not to mention Alabama and New York), the information you lease may be generated and designed anywhere in the world. Likewise, the issues and challenges facing libraries as they move to large-scale digital collections are global in nature.

Conferences about digital libraries are also international; in September I attended "Digilib: Towards a User-Centered Approach to Digital Libraries" in Finland. Two hundred attendees from over 20 countries discussed how to gather user information for the purpose of designing more useful digital libraries. Sessions were …

What User Studies Tell Us, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Valid conclusions about user behavior should only be made within the research method used by each study. For example, if a researcher interviews academic faculty to determine if they prefer print or electronic sources, the conclusions should only state what faculty prefer, not what faculty actually use.

Virtual Reference Services In A Real World, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

NOW THAT LIBRARIES have substantial digital collections available to users from their homes or offices, it isn't surprising that remote access ("virtual") reference services are the latest trend. LJ recently provided an overview of virtual reference services and reported on local progress and national initiatives to implement online reference help 24 hours a day, seven days a week (see "The Shape of E-Reference," LJ 2/1/01 p. 46ff.).

Recently, I asked the directors of reference in the academic member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to describe changes in their reference services over the last three years and how …