Information literacy of doctoral students in engineering and the librarian’s role

Abstract

After a reform of the doctoral study programme at the authors’ faculty in Slovenia, an introductory course on scientific research methods became mandatory. It includes the topic of information literacy and covers its five main elements according to ALA 2000 standards. A librarian/researcher runs the practical part. As this course has been running for seven years we were interested in its impacts: (1) what are students’ subjective impressions about the course and (2) if and how such a systematic education on information literacy topics objectively impacts their publishing and citations. The paper first presents the results of the questionnaire among 120 PhD students (the response was 67.5%, i.e. 81 of them) conducted immediately after the completion of the information literacy course. Four indicators were measured to address Question 1. Question 2 was approached by examining students’ citation practices in their own PhD theses and their publishing results. The hypothesis was that the information literacy course increased students’ competence. It was tested using quantitative parameters, such as the number of references in PhD theses and the number of scientific publications written during the study and shortly after it, separately for reformed programme students who attended the information literacy course, and for pre-Bologna reform students who did not take this course. We found that although pre-reform students on average cited a few more references than their post-reform colleagues, there were smaller differences among post-reform than among pre-reform students. Also, the median/typical post-reform students cited more references, what can be attributed to the information literacy course.

Conceptual framework for scholarly communication guidance by the academic library: The case of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

“…The academic library should be able to find ways of guiding doctoral students to cater for the gap that is left or train them to be totally equipped for effective scholarly communication. As indicated by Keller (2015) and Koler-Povh and Turk (2018), there is a need for cooperation between doctoral students and academic librarians not only to successfully complete their studies but also to develop useful skills and competencies for everyday life research work.…”

“…Academic libraries exist to support the teaching and research of their parent institutions (Kennan et al, 2014) and should dynamically find new roles and responsibilities to engage with researchers in order to enhance the institutional research profiles (Delaney and Bates, 2018). Koler-Povh and Turk (2018) stressed the importance of cooperation between doctoral candidates and librarians, not only to successfully complete studies but also to develop useful skills and competencies for everyday life research work. Emphasis is placed on the role of the academic library in supporting, sharing and preserving doctoral research through training on institutional repositories, open access, bibliometrics, enhancement of research impact and research data management (Borgman, 2015; Keller, 2015; Suber, 2012; Willinsky, 2006).…”

Literature on Information Literacy

“…Flierl et al 15 discovered that academic performance and information literacy have a relationship. Koler-Povh and Turk 16 observed that the difference between the highest and lowest citation and publication parameters among the students is more negligible in the group of not attending the information literacy class. Tang 17 conducted a study in the Open University of Hong Kong to evaluate the first-year undergraduate student's IL skills and pointed out that information literacy should be included in their curriculum.…”

The Teaching Needs of Engineering Faculty Compared with Business Faculty: How the Library and Librarian Fit In

“…While there are many papers examining the role of the academic liaison librarian providing information literacy instruction from a general perspective, the focus of this paper is on engineering and business, so the literature review focused on those academic areas. There are a large number of papers that focus on engineering information literacy skills [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] and still more tackle the area of information literacy instruction for business students [38][39][40][41][42][43].…”