Library Literature: June 2008 Archives

Research Productivity Among Librarians: Factors Leading to Publications at Penn State by Joseph Fennewald paints an encouraging environment for professional publication that does indeed exist here at Penn State. I also like the fact that the most productive type of faculty librarian (in journals and books) is MLS plus a second Masters (like me).

A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Relationship between Critical Thinking and Library Anxiety among Undergraduate Students in their Information Search Process by Nahyun Kwon reinforces an earlier study on correlation between anxiety and success for library users. A good map (textual and visual) for library service desk interaction and advice for general interaction of library staff with users.

Measuring Students’ Information Literacy Skills through Abstracting: Case Study from a Library & Information Science Perspective by Maria Pinto, Andrés Fernández-Ramos, and Anne-Vinciane Doucet is a very long article with lots of figures and tables on abstracting, which I found out from a colleague is a totally separate "profession" in some ways to librarianship. I certainly didn't study it in library school (should I have gone to Spain?)

Better than Brief Tests: Coverage Power Tests of Collection Strength by Howard D. White

My first peer reviewed (co-authored) article appeared in May and my first solo article in a major journal appears in June, here are the citations.

Meier, J.J. & Conkling, T.W. "Google Scholar's Coverage of the Engineering Literature: An Empirical Study," Journal of Academic Librarianship, May 2008

Meier, J.J. "Chat widgets on the library website: Help at the point of need," Computers in Libraries, June 2008