M. Carl Drott, Jacqueline C. Mancall and Belver C. Griffith
Bradford's Law is presented as an observation made from the outcome of searching, rather than a mathematical development. The organization and presentation of search data is…
Abstract
Bradford's Law is presented as an observation made from the outcome of searching, rather than a mathematical development. The organization and presentation of search data is explained. Potential applications of Bradford's Law are discussed. New findings are presented which show the relationship described by Bradford's Law to be fundamentally important but in a more subtle way than previously supposed. Future developments are suggested in terms of their impact on librarianship.
M. Carl Drott, Toni Carbo Bearman and Belver C. Griffith
A study of 266 little‐known technical house journals in the US, UK and France is described. Methods of journal selection, location, and bibliographic control are discussed. A…
Abstract
A study of 266 little‐known technical house journals in the US, UK and France is described. Methods of journal selection, location, and bibliographic control are discussed. A sample of technical articles from the journals was searched in abstracting and indexing services to determine their coverage and the extent to which such materials are prepublished or republished in standard periodicals. It was found that, although there are a significant number of technical articles published in house journals, the coverage of this literature in secondary sources is very low, and the literature is rarely included in standard periodicals.
BELVER C. GRIFFITH, PATRICIA N. SERVI, ANITA L. ANKER and M. CARL DROTT
Scientific writings age; individual documents, issues or volumes of scientific journals are, eventually, less valued and less used with the passage of time. Long periods of time…
Abstract
Scientific writings age; individual documents, issues or volumes of scientific journals are, eventually, less valued and less used with the passage of time. Long periods of time, say more than several decades, render portions of the literature obsolete, and ‘aging’ is evident. However, controversy has developed recently about quantitative models, particularly Brookes, which proposes a systematic exponential aging process for the corpus of library periodical holdings. In disagreement with these models, Sandison presents use patterns showing no aging; and Line points to methodological difficulties in demonstrating aging. Both the models, and the questions raised regarding their validity are of considerable interest and importance to our understanding of the nature of scientific information and the management of collections. We show, here, that citation data conform well to the Brookes model, but the chief findings regard the nature of the aging process and its apparent range within scientific literatures. A scientific journal which is used as an archive ages slowly; one which supports a research front ages quickly. Aging depends not merely on the material itself, but its user, and a single journal may be aged very differently by different user communities. Lastly, aging rates vary among journals, and it is relatively easy to identify journals which age at about the rate at which the literature grows and journals which appear to exhaust most of their utility within a few years.
Gloriana St. Clair and Rose Mary Magrill
Anyone who has tried to review studies relating to use of academic libraries may argue that a great deal of research exists on college students and how they use their libraries…
Abstract
Anyone who has tried to review studies relating to use of academic libraries may argue that a great deal of research exists on college students and how they use their libraries. Studies of reading habits and library use among college students have been appearing for more than fifty years, and the diligent student can compile an impressive bibliography of these studies. In spite of all we have learned about student interaction with library resources, there is still much we do not know.
Virgil L.P. Blake and Renée Tjoumas
There are two factors essential to collection development and management in any library or information center. The first is an explicit statement of the organization's goals. The…
Abstract
There are two factors essential to collection development and management in any library or information center. The first is an explicit statement of the organization's goals. The second is the size of the materials budget—the financial resources provided to achieve the goals. Professional literature includes a profusion of information dealing with the selection process for school library media centers, but very little is available about materials budgets. A clear, practical and rational procedure needs to be developed to help school librarians determine how much funding is necessary to fulfill the school library media center's goals.
Word‐oriented databases of potential relevance to the multidisciplinary field of emergency management were identified by the University of Illinois, Information Retrieval Research…
Abstract
Word‐oriented databases of potential relevance to the multidisciplinary field of emergency management were identified by the University of Illinois, Information Retrieval Research Laboratory under contract to the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This article is an extension and outgrowth of that contract. It analyzes forty databases for relevance to emergency management by searching each database using an emergency management subject profile, printing a random sample of citations to determine percent of false drops, and ranking the databases according to number of relevant citations. Bradford's law of scatter is shown to apply to this multidisciplinary field, using databases instead of journals and citations instead of articles. No one database provides more than 19% of the literature, however, illustrating that the literature in the field is widely scattered throughout databases. These findings can help in the choice of the specific databases containing emergency management citations and in the determination of how many databases need to be searched in order to retrieve a given percentage of the literature. A companion article in this issue of Online Review — ‘Evaluation of database coverage: a comparison of two methodologies,’ explains the subject profile evaluation method employed in this project and compares it to another coverage evaluation technique.
A new option in resequencing output from online searches of journal literatures is proposed: computerized sorting of hits by the journals in which they appear, and then of…
Abstract
A new option in resequencing output from online searches of journal literatures is proposed: computerized sorting of hits by the journals in which they appear, and then of journals, high to low, by the number of hits appearing in each. This two‐step operation is called ‘Bradfordizing’ since it ranks journals in order of their yields of hits, in the manner used by S. C. Bradford in formulating his much‐studied law. Benefits envisioned from Bradfordizing output include (1) an online summary report that would show, before hits were printed out, the journals involved in the retrieval and their respective yields; (2) capability to retrieve hits selectively by journal, based on the report; (3) capability to display certain statistics to help in making retrieval decisions, or in the interest of bibliometric research; and (4) printouts of hits arranged in a way that corresponds to journal runs on shelves, thereby helping librarians provide copies of desired items.
The following annotated list of materials on providing library orientation to users and instructing them in library and information skills is the tenth annual review of this…
Abstract
The following annotated list of materials on providing library orientation to users and instructing them in library and information skills is the tenth annual review of this literature and covers publications from 1983. A few items have not been annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of these items.