A citation analysis of chemistry PhD dissertations at the University of Texas at Austin yielded data on how often graduate students cite books in their bibliographies, and on the characteristics of the books cited, in terms of age and local ownership. The analysis examined samples of dissertations selected from five discrete years--1988, 2006,…

A diversity audit of the natural resources monographs took place in the spring and summer of 2022 at the California Polytechnic University, Humboldt Library. The goals of the audit were to construct a diversity audit that could be undertaken with very limited time and personnel availability. The findings have provided the library with important…

Science and engineering libraries have an important role to play in preserving the intellectual content in research areas of the departments they serve. This study employs bibliographic data from the Web of Science database to examine how much research material is required to cover 90% of faculty citations in civil engineering and computer…

Increasing demand for biotechnology and biomedical resources prompted the Engineering Library at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) to complete a collection assessment of the journals, books, and other resources provided by the University Libraries. This paper presents a variety of methods for evaluating library collections and describes…

In response to a hypothesis that researchers who no longer use print journals may miss out on the serendipitous benefits of "poor indexing" provided by print tables of contents, librarians at the University of Florida surveyed their engineering faculty to determine faculty use of tables of contents in either print or online format. Results…

This paper discusses the author's experience directing the Purple Mountain Observatory Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Nanjing, China. Routine collection development, management and preservation issues are described, and the unique challenges and opportunities involved in operating a remote observatory library are highlighted.

Various normalization techniques to transform journal impact factors (JIFs) into a standard scale or range of values have been reported a number of times in the literature, but have seldom been part of collection development librarians' tool kits. In this paper, JIFs as reported in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database are converted to…

Most academic libraries are seeking to provide electronic access to the very dynamic and changing field of technology related material. "Safari Tech Books Online" and "Books24x7" are the major e-book collections in this area. We compared the "Safari Tech Books Online" and "Books24x7" e-book packages as to…

Jill Powell, engineering librarian from Cornell University, visited the library at NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, Maryland in July 2013, interviewing library staff and selected NASA scientists. She studied the library's digital projects, publications, services, and operations. She also interviewed several NASA scientists on information-seeking…

The author is a reference and instruction librarian at Iowa State University with collection development and liaison responsibilities for chemistry, biochemistry, entomology, and natural resource ecology. She recently came to librarianship with an education and three years' experience in biochemistry and biotechnology. During the last four years…

Two science branch libraries at Penn State's University Park campus hosted film series centered on scientific documentary films. Although the reasons for starting the series differ, both have been successful in meeting their goals. Patron responses have been favorable, and the series have focused attention on the collections and services offered…