This study utilizes COUNTER 5 data from the University of Dayton (UD) to measure full-text retrievals of e-journal articles from five major academic journal publishers (Taylor & Francis, SAGE, Oxford, Wiley, and Springer). Usage data from these publishers' e-journals within EBSCO is compared to the same content when accessed from publisher…

The questionnaires' origin (sources from which elements of the questionnaire are derived) and initial development (process of making a questionnaire from elements) should be assessed before their measurement properties. There is no Critical Appraisal Tool (CAT) that comprehensively assesses the origin and initial development of questionnaires…

Introduction: Recent developments in the field of scientific information resource provision lead us to the key research question, namely,what is the coverage of freely available information sources when writing doctoral theses, and whether the academic library can assume the leading role as a direct intermediator for information users. Method:…

Database trials do not often garner a lot of feedback. Using community-organizing techniques can not only potentially increase the amount of feedback received but also deepen the relationship between the librarian and his or her constituent group. This is a case study of the use of community-organizing techniques in a series of database trials for…

This article investigates academic library needs of doctoral students. The study identifies PhD students' information literacy training needs and explores current levels of library engagement, barriers to use, and gaps in existing services. First-year PhD students at Ulster University (UU) were surveyed and interviews were undertaken with three…

Despite the prevalence of academic libraries adopting web-scale discovery tools, few studies have quantified their effect on the use of library collections. This study measures the impact that EBSCO Discovery Service has had on use of library resources through circulation statistics, use of electronic resources, and interlibrary loan requests.…

Students today perform research in a disintermediated environment, which often allows them to struggle directly with the process of selecting research tools and choosing scholarly sources. The authors conducted a qualitative study with twenty students, using structured observations to ascertain the processes students use to select databases and…

Libraries make heavy investments in electronic resources, with many of these resources reflecting title changes, bundled subsets, or content changes of formerly print material. These changes can distance the electronic format from its print origins, creating discovery and access issues. A task force was formed to explore the enhancement of catalog…

Nearly every commercial database that covers natural sciences and engineering offers some type of current awareness (CA) service that provides regular updates to users on current literature in a selected field of interest. Current awareness services include e-mail alerts, tables of contents, and RSS feeds. This study was designed to find out what…

The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a quantitative analysis exploring the interaction and relationship between the online database and electronic journal collections at the J. N. Desmarais Library of Laurentian University. A very strong relationship exists between the number of searches and the size of the online database…

This article describes the development of the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA). The VIVA statistics-processing system remains a work in progress. Member libraries will benefit from the ability to obtain the actual data from the VIVA site, rather than just the summaries, so a project to make these data available is currently being planned. The…

Usage statistics are an important metric for making decisions on serials. Although the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries have been collecting usage statistics, the statistics had not frequently been used to make decisions and had not been included in collection development policy. After undergoing a collection assessment, the…

In the past decade, academic libraries have struggled with the design of an effective library home page. Since librarians' mental models of information architecture differ from those of their patrons, usability assessments are necessary in designing a user-centered home page. This study details a usability sequence of card sort and paper and…

Describes the usability study that was designed at Hampshire College (Massachusetts) to see whether students were successfully using the library's Web site, particularly for reference services. Emphasizes the need for retesting and discusses results of the usability testing, including an increase in Web site hits and database searches. (LRW)