Journal Use by Graduate Students as Indicated by Master's Theses Bibliographies at an Urban Commuter College, 1991–2004

Sexton, Ellen

doi:10.1300/j103v24n02_04

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…This is the argument that students will use journals available locally rather than using 'the best' articles which might require going into the stacks or even using interlibrary borrowing (Sexton, 2006). This argument was not a concern for the present project for two reasons: 1) the researchers assume that it would be equally true (or not) across the three disciplines we studied, therefore making the comparative analysis still meaningful, and 2) the researchers want to know what types of resources students are using (e.g., the mix of books to journals by discipline, or the age of material cited), even if these are the most convenient materials.…”

Section: Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Edwards¹,

Jones²

2014

EBLIP

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2014 Edwards and Jones. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -At the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), researchers compared how well the library collections supported doctoral research in the three related disciplines of education, psychology, and social welfare. The goal of this project was to gather empirical data to answer questions about materials cited in dissertations, including ownership, age of materials and disciplinary usage.Methods -Researchers analyzed the bibliographies of doctoral dissertations from three academic departments at UCB: education (2009-2010), psychology (2009-2010), and social welfare (2009)(2010)(2011). The sampling methodology used a systematic sample with a random start. To achieve a 95% (+/-4%) confidence interval, the sample included a total of 3,372 citations from 107 dissertations. Researchers consulted with a statistician to determine the statistical significance of the results. The test for the age of citation used a signed Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2014, 9.2 5 ranks test, which is typical for ordinal data or skewed interval data. The test for ownership was a chi-square test, which is typical for nominal data or dichotomous data.Results -Researchers determined that a very high percentage of the cited journals were owned or licensed by the Library. The ownership rate for cited journals was 97% for both education and social welfare, and 99% for psychology. There was a statistically significant difference between the three disciplines, with psychology better supported than either education (p=.02) or social welfare (p=.01). However, since ownership rates for journals in all three disciplines were extremely high, this was not a meaningful difference. For books, the researchers found a significantly smaller percentage of books owned in social welfare compared to either education (p=.00) or psychology (p=.00). We found no significant difference between the percentages of books owned in psychology versus education (p=.27). Psychology students cited the highest percentage of journals while education students cited the highest percentage of books. Psychology students cited almost no free web resources, but education and social welfare students did cite free web resources (primarily government documents, working papers, or nongovernmental organization reports). All three disciplines cited older material than anticipated.Conclusions -The citation analysis, while time-consuming, provided new and important information about the use of the Library's collections and the level of support the collections afford doctoral stude...

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Section: Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Edwards¹,

Jones²

2014

EBLIP

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“…33 There is no discernible pattern of greater journal usage over time in the theses in this study. There were only seven LGBTQ journals cited.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

LGBTQ Collection Assessment: Library Ownership of Resources Cited by Master’s Students

Graziano¹

2016

CRL

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Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Studies and the broader discipline of sexuality studies are multidisciplinary fields that require a different approach to collection development in academic libraries. Many library collections budgets reflect the traditional divisions by academic department, and multidisciplinary fields often transcend these conventional boundaries. The concept of one selector for one department, while being a well-established and practical approach to collection building, is limited in breadth and scope and is not necessarily suitable for multidisciplinary fields. This study uses citation analysis to assess the LGBTQ collection at Concordia University Libraries, to ascertain collection strengths and weaknesses, and to recommend collaborative collection development as a viable method of building an excellent collection in a multidisciplinary subject area.

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“…Examples of such user studies are those focusing on undergraduate students' theses (examples are: Leiding, 2005;Kriebel & Lapham, 2008) or M.A. theses (examples are: Anunobi, 2002Riahinia, 2010;Sexton, 2006;Waugh & Ruppel, 2004). Ph.D. dissertations have also received attention from citation analysis researchers who regard dissertations as being a good indication of which material is being used (examples are: Conkling, Harwell, McCallips, Nyana, & Osif, 2010;Gooden, 2001, Iivonen et al, 2009, Kaczor, 2014Kumar & Dora, 2011;Nabe & Imre, 2008;Kushkowski et al, 2003;Maz-Machado et al, 2012;Romić & Mitrović, 2014;Zafrunnisha & Pulla Reddy, 2010;Zong et al, 2013).…”

Section: Application Of Citation Analysis -Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citation Analysis of M.A. Theses and Ph.D. Dissertations in Sociology and Anthropology: An Assessment of Library Resource Usage

Rosenberg

2015

The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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Journal Use by Graduate Students as Indicated by Master's Theses Bibliographies at an Urban Commuter College, 1991–2004

Cited by 8 publications

References 12 publications

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

LGBTQ Collection Assessment: Library Ownership of Resources Cited by Master’s Students

Citation Analysis of M.A. Theses and Ph.D. Dissertations in Sociology and Anthropology: An Assessment of Library Resource Usage

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