Deborah D. Blecic

Information-seeking behavior and the use of online resources: a snapshot of current health sciences faculty.

OBJECTIVE The research assesses the information-seeking behaviors of health sciences faculty, including their use of online databases, journals, and social media. METHODOLOGY A survey was designed and distributed via email to 754 health sciences faculty at a large urban research university with 6 health sciences colleges. RESULTS Twenty-six percent (198) of faculty responded. MEDLINE was the primary database utilized, with 78.5% respondents indicating they use the database at least once a week. Compared to MEDLINE, Google was utilized more often on a daily basis. Other databases showed much lower usage. CONCLUSIONS Low use of online databases other than MEDLINE, link-out tools to online journals, and online social media and collaboration tools demonstrates a need for meaningful promotion of online resources and informatics literacy instruction for faculty. IMPLICATIONS Library resources are plentiful and perhaps somewhat overwhelming. Librarians need to help faculty discover and utilize the resources and tools that libraries have to offer.

Performance measures for electronic journals: A user-centered approach

SUMMARY Libraries are spending increasing amounts to provide access to electronic journals. The decision to move toward digital collections is grounded in the belief that electronic journals offer significant benefits over their print counterparts. At present there is very little data to support that position because performance measures for electronic journals have not been fully developed. This paper describes a pilot study to test a methodology for evaluating electronic journals employing user-centered criteria. The study examined science and health sciences journal titles for which the library holds both paper and electronic subscriptions.

Measures of health sciences journal use: a comparison of vendor, link-resolver, and local citation statistics.

OBJECTIVE Libraries require efficient and reliable methods to assess journal use. Vendors provide complete counts of articles retrieved from their platforms. However, if a journal is available on multiple platforms, several sets of statistics must be merged. Link-resolver reports merge data from all platforms into one report but only record partial use because users can access library subscriptions from other paths. Citation data are limited to publication use. Vendor, link-resolver, and local citation data were examined to determine correlation. Because link-resolver statistics are easy to obtain, the study library especially wanted to know if they correlate highly with the other measures. METHODS Vendor, link-resolver, and local citation statistics for the study institution were gathered for health sciences journals. Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients were calculated. RESULTS There was a high positive correlation between all three data sets, with vendor data commonly showing the highest use. However, a small percentage of titles showed anomalous results. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Link-resolver data correlate well with vendor and citation data, but due to anomalies, low link-resolver data would best be used to suggest titles for further evaluation using vendor data. Citation data may not be needed as it correlates highly with other measures.