University of Oklahoma librarians invited faculty in the pure and applied sciences to discuss current and potential e-book use in research and instruction. The study consisted of an online survey followed by individual interviews featuring e-book demonstrations. Faculty viewed e-book titles on a variety of platforms.Opinions were solicited on current publisher or aggregator interfaces, essential and desirable features or functionalities in platforms, and the future of the e-book in academia.

In this paper, we report the results of a bibliometric study in which we track cross-disciplinary citation behavior in the sciences. We hypothesize that cross-disciplinary citation in the sciences increased over the time period 1985–2000. Unlike most previous studies in this area, we assign discipline to a paper by its first author’s affiliation, and we hypothesize that assigning papers to disciplines based on first-author affiliation would yield results consistent with previous findings on cross-disciplinary citation rates in the sciences. Using the output of scientists in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, and Physics departments at 12 large research universities in 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000 as our data set, we measure the cross-disciplinary citation rates of each discipline and compare our results to the findings of previous studies in this area.

Physical science librarians rely on personal communication and online discussion groups for information to enlighten their practice. Scholarly journals appear third on the list of resources used to inform daily activities and are used primarily to support information literacy instruction, subscription decisions, and their own research as well as to learn about best practices in other libraries. The preferred library and information studies journals publish virtually equal proportions of research and nonresearch articles, with the majority of research articles being reports of qualitative surveys without statistical analysis. The popular journals were not those most highly cited, nor were the research articles cited to a greater extent than the nonresearch articles. In essence, the experiences and opinions of colleagues and patrons were found to be of greater value to the practice of physical science librarianship than reports of original research.hysical science librarians act as the gatekeepers to the literature of chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and geosciences. These exceptionally information-literate and technologically savvy information professionals are able to extract even the most esoteric of information from a wide range of print and electronic resources. Not only are physical science librarians able to mine the vast body of physical science information successfully, but they also make daunting decisions about which of the o en exorbitantly priced physical science information resources to acquire for their institutions. Added to these tasks is the charge of instructing physical science students, faculty, and researchers in the use of information resources.Clearly, physical science librarians are required to possess a wide range of abilities, yet how they gain the knowledge to carry out their panoply of charges beyond the a ainment of a master's degree is not well understood or documented. This article presents the results of a study of the information-seeking activities used by physical science librarians to inform their practice. The results are part of a larger investigation that also profiled the level of education and experience and the re- Cecelia M. Brown is an Associate Professor in the