Internet Competency

I can't believe that I am completing my final competency assignment for this class! It does not feel like I am at the end of a semester. For this assignment, I had to find a reputable website on my academic librarian topic.

I found the website called The Kept-Up Academic Librarian. This website contains postings of articles about developments in the higher education sector geared towards academic librarians. This site was created and is maintained by Steven Bell, an academic librarian at Temple University. The articles seem to cover topics about academic libraries, technology, and studies on various student behaviors. I feel that it will help me stay current in my career. Lycos was used to perform the search. I chose Lycos because I've never used it before and wanted to branch out from my Google craze.

The Citation Pearl Search Strategy in WorldCat

I performed a citation pearl search in WorldCat. This strategy can be used when you already have a citation for your search question. In this strategy, you start with the citation you already have and retrieve it in the database in which you are working in. A search statement can then be formed to find similar records using the indexing terms that appear in the record retrieved.

The topic of interest and naive question are the same as before.

Topic of Interest: Nonuser studies

Naïve Question: What are some of the characteristics of nonuser groups identified by public libraries?

I started with the following citation that I obtained from WorldCat from doing a previous search on the above naïve question.

Citation: Galloway, S. B. B. (1978). The relationship between awareness of the Davis County libraries and their use and nonuse. ERIC reports, ED 179 221. Washington D.C.: Educational Resources Information Center.

The following subject terms were found in the citation record.

Public libraries – Utah – Davis County

Public libraries – Utah – Davis County – Use studies

Library use studies – Utah – Davis County

These terms were used to develop the following search statement.

ss1 subject search: public libraries AND library use studies

The result is 697 records ranked by relevance.

This gives plenty of good sources on user studies in public libraries. However, there are mostly records about users, and it would be nice to view the records that specifically concentrate on non-users. I pulled up a few records that had non-user information in them, but they all had the same subject terms used in ss1. This made me assume that there were no specific subject terms for nonuser. I was able to confirm this by trying to look it up as a thesaurus term and found none other than use studies. Therefore, I added a keyword search to my query for the term “nonuse?”

ss2: public libraries [in subject] AND library use studies [in subject] AND (nonuse? OR non-use?) [in keyword]

The result is 37 records that look promising. The following is a citation that I found.

Citation: Morrill, J. H. (2003). The Wisconsin library user (and non-user): Outcomes of a statewide survey. Madison, WI: Morrill Solutions. http://www.winnefox.org/wplc/current/survey2003/report.pdf.

I would use this method before any of the others mentioned in previous postings if I already had a citation to start off with. It’s quick and much easier than using a search strategy where you have to look into the thesaurus and gather subject terms.

Multimedia Competency

I found this model created by Michael Habib that he developed while working on his MLS paper. According to Habib (2006):

This model presents a view of how students might view the library as place in relation to their academic and social lives. It is at this intersection that I propose Library 2.0 has begun to materialize. The primary goal of the model is to encourage brainstorming over how we can develop virtual environments that will fit into students' lives. (para. 2)

This graphic illustration created by Michael Habib, 2006, is licensed under http://www.flickr.com/photos/habibmi/222296001/sizes/o/#cc_license / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en

I like the way that an academic library is shown as fitting into a student’s social as well as academic life. It would be interesting to explore this model more and see if this is necessarily true. This makes me ponder about the things that I could do as an academic librarian to help this model become more of a reality.

References

Habib, M. (2006, August 22). Academic library 2.0 concept models (basic v2 and detailed). Message posted to http://mchabib.blogspot.com/2006/08/academic-library-20-concept-models.html

Habib, M. (2006). [Graphic illustration the Academic Library 2.0 August 22, 2006]. Academic library 2.0 concept model basic v2. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/habibmi/222296001/

DIALOG Competency

This week I performed a building block search in DIALOG. A building block search is where key terms or facets are taken out of the naïve question. The facets are then combined with Boolean logic.

Topic of Interest: Nonuser studies

Naïve Question: What are some of the characteristics of nonuser groups identified by public libraries?

DIALOG Search - ERIC:

Thesaurus terms were found using the expand command (e). Just type in e and then the term to get thesaurus terms.

In DIALOG, search statements for each facet can be entered separately. DIALOG then gives the number of items found for each term and then the total found when all terms are combined. Each of the bulleted statements was entered separately.

• ss nonuser OR nonusers

Results from DIALOG:

S1 NONUSER 32

S2 NONUSERS 231

S3 NONUSER OR NONUSERS 254

• ss public libraries

Results from DIALOG:

S4 PUBLIC LIBRARIES (ADDED 07/01/1966) 6403

• ss library research

Results from DIALOG:

S5 LIBRARY RESEARCH (ADDED 07/01/1966) 2062

DIALOG search statements s3, s4, and s5 can be combined to form the following command.

• ss s3 AND s4 AND s5

Results from DIALOG:

S6 S3 AND S4 AND S5 2

I was able to see my results of 2 records using the following command.

• t6/5/all

The following citations were found.

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (1982). Pilot test of the online public access catalog project's user and nonuser questionnaires. Final report. Dublin, OH: Author.

Rosen, M.E. (1990). Assessing library needs in rural America. Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, 4(1), 87-90.

I looked at the list of 17 records obtained from combining s3 and s4 because I found the library research facet extremely narrowing, and there were relevant resources pertinent to my search question in that search as well, including the two listed above.

This database is amazing! I like the way it shows the number of documents for each aspect of the search statement as well as the combined search statement. It helps you see what terms are actually producing results! This one is the best so far. Also, the thesaurus is more detailed. I felt that the thesaurus terms had the exact wording for what I was looking for.

Inspiration - Image Competency

My love for academic libraries began as an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma. This is when I realized that libraries can be beautiful. The Great Reading Room in the Bizzell Memorial Library is absolutely breathtaking. On nights that I just felt like I could not study one second more, I would walk to the library and study here. The beauty alone was inspiring and calming. All frustrations would melt away.

I found this image by conducting a search using Google images. Typing in "University of Oklahoma library" yields this image among others. Finding this also introduced me to the Creative Commons license. See the copyright link below the picture for more information.


This picture of the Great Reading Room is licensed under

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pokechamp01/ / CC BY-SA 2.0