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L651 Notes 2/11/03
 | Mushroom story to cap off class |
 | plaster of paris morels in the yard on April fools day |
| To err is human, to forgive is not library policy |
| Checklists |
| Disadvantages of Checklist, cont. |
| it is not always clear what is actually a "hit" |
| on order? |
| different branch? |
| different edition? |
| translation? |
| different format? |
| partial set? |
| it's up to evaluator to define parameters |
| doesn't consider actual availability of item |
| a lot of things are owned but not available |
| may be lost or stolen |
| many lists do not consider interdisciplinarity |
| most checklists are based on narrow disciplines |
| list could have errors |
| check under both author and title |
| transliterations from other languages, may not always be uniform |
| Story about petting Secretariat and shaking hands with the governor of Texas in the same 10 days. |
| Weighted checklist |
| Some items count more than others |
| One can create his own hierarchy by combining lists |
| Automation can complement checklist method |
| Internet OPACS |
| WLN BCL3 (books for college libraries 3) |
| electronic version of indexing and abstracting service as the basis for a checklist |
| Inductive Method |
| Herbert Goldhar, director of public library in Evansville |
| developed for public libraries |
| Look at libraries and seeing if stuff in the libraries is on a list |
| to determine books a library does own that it shouldn't |
| tested in four different studies in about 75 libraries over a quarter century |
| checked 559 titles against |
| book review digest |
| booklist |
| Syracuse Public Library Gold Star List |
| fiction catalog |
| findings |
| 15% on no list |
| 25% on one list |
| 35% on two lists |
| 18% on three lists |
| 7% on 4 lists |
| Checked 589 books against |
| Reference Books |
| Subscription Books Bulletin |
| Standard Catalog for Public Libraries |
| Technical Book Review index |
| Walford |
| Winchell |
| Similar findings |
| Steps to carrying this out |
| get a sample from your library |
| identify representative lists |
| check the sample against the list |
| Problems with inductive method |
| identifying lists to use |
| defining what constitutes a hit |
| interpreting the results (what's good, what's bad?) |
| better for smaller libraries, not so good for big libraries |
| Elzy and Lancaster study |
| tested technique in academic libraries |
| worked on specific collection |
| 389 item sample, checked against 4 different lists |
| results on handout |
| Joke about how George Washington was born in Texas |
| "If you can't tell a lie, you're not going to amount to anything in Texas." |
| Bibliometrics in evaluation |
| Intro |
| The Application of quantitative methods to the study of information resources |
| History |
| Cole & Eales - 1917 - study in Science Progress |
| W. W. Hulme - 1923 - Statistical Bibliography |
| Can tell us about the written communication process |
| Language that scholars use |
| Age of material |
| What are the most highly cited journals? |
| Importance of interdisciplinarity |
| S. R. Ranganathan - 1948 - "Librametry" |
| use of metrics for library operations |
| Pritchard - 1969 - Bibliometrics |
| Letter to the editor, Journal of Documentation Research |
| Assembling and interp of stats relating to books and periodicals |
| historical movements |
| national and research use of books and periodicals |
| local general use of books and periodicals |
| some have expanded this definition to include any application of statistics to a library setting |
| Terms |
| Bibliometrician is someone who does bibliometrics |
| scientometrics - use of statistics applied to science |
| informetrics - applying stats to information |
| ISSI - International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics |
| Cybermetrics - application of stats to cyberspace |
| Webometrics - application of stats to the study of the web |
| Bibliometric laws |
| Lotka's Law |
| Statistician and bibliographer |
| most authors contribute one item each, increasingly smaller number who make greater numbers of contributions |
| 61% contribute 1 item each |
| 1/n2 as a proportion to the number who've contributed 1 where n=number of contribution. |
| thus contributors of 2 articles will number 1/4 of the number who make one contribution |
| Price's Corollary |
| roughly half the papers are produced by the square root of the number of authors. |
| Zipf's law |
| Philologist |
| Use of words in a text |
| most words used infrequently, small number of words used frequently |
| good for design of info retrieval systems. some words are too heavily used |
| Bradford's Law |
| British librarian |
| Concentration & Scatter |
| Small number of journals have the most useful articles |
| Large number contain fewer useful articles |
| Bradford Zones |
| Zone 1 - 5 journals produce 250 used articles |
| Zone 2 - 30 journals produce 250 used articles |
| Zone 3 - 180 journals produce 250 used articles |
| Law of diminishing returns |
| Usually used in the setting of research libraries |
| Easy to give core coverage to a discipline, but hard to give comprehensive coverage |
| General Applications |
| Barber & Mancell |
| Papers written by HS students in college prep programs |
| Citation analysis |
| 67% of citations to books |
| Bradford distribution to a few highly used journals |
| Story about Tom's daughter leaving her shoes on the top of the car. |
| Use of Bibliometric Data to rank info science ed. programs |
| Citation analysis in Collection Development |
| JCR can be used to evaluate journals |
| journal ranking methods |
| Story of Larry King telling about people learning of the assassination of JFK |
| Nixon was in Dallas that same day. |
| Hillary Clinton went to Dem. convention in Chicago going through her old neighborhood. |
| She meets an old flame. |
| Bill says "Aren't you glad you married me. That guy pumps gas." |
| "If I'd married him, he'd be president." |
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