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This study explored the information literacy practices of undergraduate students conducting research for their Honors theses in their final year of study. Data was collected from 11 Honors students during several months through four rounds of open-ended, journal-style questionnaires and two rounds of interviews. Honors students’ sense of confidence varied throughout the thesis process, and several practices were identified that influenced students’ sense of self-efficacy. This study suggests that instruction librarians can help to increase students’ self-efficacy by modeling advanced research strategies, designing opportunities for students to practice challenging research tasks that build on previous skills, and addressing the affective and self-regulatory aspects of conducting higher-level research.

Ein lineares System der Ordnung η mit r Eingangs-und s Ausgangsgrößen kann stets durch maximal n(r + s) Parameter eindeutig beschrieben werden. Es wird gezeigt, wie sich diese Parameterzahl vermindert, wenn minimale Steuerbarkeit oder minimale Beobachtbarkeit des Systems vorausgesetzt wird. Es folgt daraus, daßdie Forderung nach minimaler Beobachtbarkeit eine zu strenge Voraussetzung für die Existenz der kanonischen Form von Bucy [I] darstellt. Die notwendigen und hinreichenden Bedingungen für die Existenz dieser Form werden angegeben, es wird eine eindeutige Struktur dieser Form mit der kleinstmöglichen Parameterzahl festgelegt, und die Form wird schließlich so erweitert, daß sie ohne Einschränkungen existiert. In dieser erweiterten Form werden maximal n(r +s) Parameter zur Beschreibung des Systems benötigt. [ 1]. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of this form are shown, a unique structure of this form with the minimum number of parameters is determined and finally the form is extended such that it exists without restrictions. In this extended form at most n(r + s) parameters are needed to describe the system. An n-th order linear system with r inputs and s outputs can always be described by at most n(r + s) parameters. It is shown, how this number is reduced, if minimal controllability or minimal observability is assumed. It follows from this, that the requirement of minimal observability is a too stringent condition for the existence of the canonical form of Bucy

Writing a thesis is often the culminating experience for undergraduate students enrolled in university honors programs in the United States. Because writing a thesis is one of the most difficult academic tasks that an undergraduate student may undertake, it requires a high level of self-efficacy, or belief in one’s capabilities to achieve certain results. However, the factors that contribute to students’ efficacy expectations when writing a thesis are not fully understood. This qualitative study followed 11 honors students over the course of several months in order to understand their experiences as they completed their theses. Data was gathered through a series of four questionnaires and two interviews. Analysis revealed six themes: previous research experiences, emotions, project timelines, structure, advisors, and support networks. These themes suggest that students’ abilities to manage their emotions and employ self-regulatory strategies play a critical role in their self-assessments of efficacy during work on challenging academic tasks, findings which have implications for a variety of academic programs and campus support services. In addition, this study reveals that faculty mentoring of undergraduate students may require greater attention to cultivating emotional awareness and regulation than does the mentoring of graduate students.

The open access (OA) movement seeks to ensure that scholarly knowledge is available to anyone with internet access, but being available for free online is of little use if people cannot find open versions. A handful of tools have become available in recent years to help address this problem by searching for an open version of a document whenever a user hits a paywall. This project set out to study how effective four of these tools are when compared to each other and to Google Scholar, which has long been a source of finding OA versions. To do this, the project used Open Access Button, Unpaywall, Lazy Scholar, and Kopernio to search for open versions of 1,000 articles. Results show none of the tools found as many successful hits as Google Scholar, but two of the tools did register unique successful hits, indicating a benefit to incorporating them in searches for OA versions. Some of the tools also include additional features that can further benefit users in their search for accessible scholarly knowledge.