Although national standards for information literacy have been developed and approved by the Association of College and Research Libraries, little is known about the extent to which undergraduates meet these or earlier sets of standards. Since 1994, the Teaching Library at the University of California-Berkeley has conducted an ongoing Survey of Information Literacy Competencies in selected academic departments to measure the “lower-order” information literacy skills of graduating seniors. The most fundamental conclusion that can be drawn from this survey is that students think they know more about accessing information and conducting library research than they are able to demonstrate when put to the test. The University of California-Berkeley library experience is consistent with earlier study findings that students continue to be confused by the elementary conventions for organizing and accessing information.

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Assessing Information Literacy among Undergraduates: A Discussion of the Literature and the University of California-Berkeley Assessment Experience.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare open source and proprietary discovery tools and find out how much discovery tools have achieved towards becoming the next generation catalog.Design/methodology/approach – The paper summarizes characteristics of the next generation catalog into a check‐list of 12 features. This list was checked against each of seven open source and ten proprietary discovery tools to determine if those features were present or absent in those tools.Findings – Discovery tools have many next generation catalog features, but only a few can be called real next generation catalogs. Federated searching and relevancy based on circulation statistics are the two areas that both open source and proprietary discovery tools are missing. Open source discovery tools seem to be bolder and more innovative than proprietary tools in embracing advanced features of the next generation catalog. Vendors of discovery tools may need to quicken their steps in catching up.Originality/val...

Evaluating and comparing discovery tools: how close are we towards next generation catalog?

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Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research

Reference management (RM) software is widely used by researchers in the health and natural sciences. Librarians are often called upon to provide support for these products. The present study compares four prominent RMs: CiteULike, RefWorks, Mendeley, and Zotero, in terms of features offered and the accuracy of the bibliographies that they generate. To test importing and data management features, fourteen references from seven bibliographic databases were imported into each RM, using automated features whenever possible. To test citation accuracy, bibliographies of these references were generated in five different styles. The authors found that RefWorks generated the most accurate citations. The other RMs offered contrasting strengths: CiteULike in simplicity and social networking, Zotero in ease of automated importing, and Mendeley in PDF management. Ultimately, the choice of an RM should reflect the user's needs and work habits.

Reference Management Software: A Comparative Analysis of Four Products

Literature Review of Data Mining Applications in Academic Libraries

2016 top trends in academic libraries A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education

Reference, instruction, and technology come together in the arena of research support No matter the level of the researcher (from the student writing his or her first high school research paper to the Nobel prize-winning scientist) source citation is fundamental to good research Author Merinda Hensley reflects on the role of the librarian in choosing, promoting, and teaching citation management software She examines four of the most popular citation managers from the perspective of both the patron and the librarian More than just reviewing features, Hensley provides best practices for the instruction and support of these important research tools--Editor When I was an undergraduate student, I used a portable word processor to type all my research papers (Does this date me too much?) In other words, formatting and typing a paper was a lot of work and had to be properly thought out ahead of time I would write each reference on an index card, consult my dog-eared copy of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 3rd edition, and carefully write out each element of the citation, double-checking my work along the way An errant finger could mean using White-Out on the mistake, or worse, retyping the entire page Today's students have it easy They can import references into their own personal database, choose any citation style, and format a bibliography in seconds When will we admit to ourselves that twenty-first-century students do not identify with the importance of citation style? It is an afterthought, a requirement added on to an assignment from which a professor can reliably deduct points It is an aggravation to be dealt with right up until the paper submission date When I was in college, we chose a citation style, usually according to our discipline, and got to know it intimately This is simply no longer the case As librarians, how have we adjusted to the emergence of the citation manager? With new products being released every semester and old ones being updated, should we stand behind a single product? Is it our responsibility to buy access for our students and faculty? The answer is, it depends As librarians, we fuss over citation style details more than anyone else in the academy As reference librarians, we endlessly answer questions about nuances of citation style management As teaching librarians, we attest the value of academic integrity by illustrating the differences between intentional and unintentional plagiarism As technology experts, we demonstrate and explain functions of the tool And as discerning collection managers, we purchase citation management tools But with so many choices available, how can we use our expert knowledge to review and recommend the "best" citation manager of the day? And will that change tomorrow? I faced this dilemma when user questions spanning the vast number of citation managers started to mount How could I possibly understand the ins and outs of all the citation managers on the market? How could I develop instructional materials and teach workshops on several citation managers? Choices have to be made We know this much to be true--students are integrating technology into the larger fabric of their lives Reference management increasingly resembles personal digital libraries, (1) with students refining their workflow by "living in the cloud" Ultimately, today's researcher is interconnected and searching for value beyond the citation As so much these days is in perpetual beta, let's examine a few of the citation managers on the market by asking ourselves two questions: 1 Is there a value-added citation manager worth investing money and time in? 2 What are the reference and instructional impacts of these choices? A brief scan of academic library websites confirmed that RefWorks, EndNote, and Zotero are currently the most popular citation managers promoted and supported There are many comparison charts available on the web, so instead let's approach our review from the perspectives of both the user and the librarian …

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Citation management software: Features and futures

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2016 Top trends in academic libraries: A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education

A multiple-case study investigation of the discontinuation of nine chat reference services

Jenny Emanuel is passionate about the user search experience. She is young (well, younger than me) and her experience growing up with networked libraries informs her views. She doesn't rest on generalizing from herself or reading what Millennials want; she conducts usability studies and talks with a range of users to better understand which changes to library interfaces are improvements and which are just change. I asked her to set her views and research findings to paper after many conversations over our cubicle wall.--Editor For the past several years, there has been much discussion about the future of libraries in the digital age. Most of this discussion involves librarians' fears that we are failing behind technologically in meeting our patrons' information needs. As a result we've begun work to transform libraries. We have built elaborate websites incorporating electronic resources, tutorials, and social media such as blogs. We have begun to digitize collections to make them more accessible to users at a distance. We have moved from print indexes and paper journals to a system of electronic resources, giving us instant access to a plethora of both scholarly and popular media with only a few mouse clicks. Although no one can argue that these systems are perfect and will not continue to evolve in the future, one library system has continued to remain relatively unchanged from the past decade: the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). Or to use the language of our library users: the catalog. When I started library school seven years ago, no one questioned the library catalog and its status in the library; it was ubiquitous. I grew up with the catalog being networked in some capacity, and my visits to the library usually started with a text search on dumb terminal. There was no mouse and no navigating a fancy user interface; I navigated using a series of text commands to get to the proper menu to search for what I needed. Today that seems so simple, and as I look back, I liked how simple it was. But information needs and expectations change, and by the end of high school I was online and searching for information in an entirely different manner. Websites such as Yahoo!, Amazon, and later Google, changed how I found information. Search engines replaced the reference librarians who previously seemed almost godlike at finding obscure pieces of information. I could find book summaries and tables of contents from Amazon that before I'd have to make a trip to the library to access. My information needs were evolving--because I both transitioned to college and spent an increasingly larger amount of my time on the Internet. When I started library school, I knew I wanted to be a librarian who focused on technology and how libraries will change as more of their resources go online. By then, most libraries had a Web-based catalog that basically displayed the same data in a similar manner to the earlier text-based online catalog. The difference was that this new online catalog allowed for hyperlinking between different records and had a shiny, colorful interface that made the library appear to be on par with the rest of the Internet world. However, there were definitely grumblings about the online catalog in some library circles. It did not take long for librarians to realize that search engines such as Google and Amazon were getting better at meeting information needs while the library catalog remained static. Librarians assumed that the catalog could not change because of the underlying data; the complexity of a system that usually included acquisitions, catalog, and circulation modules; and the tangible and intangible costs associated with ongoing development. As an added bonus, library catalog vendors, knowing that they had no outside competition, continued implementing systems that were static at the time of installation and would remain static until the next major installation, which could be years in the future. …

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M. Kathleen Kern

Papers

2016 top trends in academic libraries A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education

Citation management software: Features and futures

2016 Top trends in academic libraries: A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education

A multiple-case study investigation of the discontinuation of nine chat reference services

Next Generation Catalogs: What Do They Do and Why Should We Care?