Increasing Effective Student Use

of the Scientific Journal Literature

(National Science FoundationNational Science Digital Library

Grant)

School of Information Sciences

Research Forum

National Science Digital Library

Services Track

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Program

Team

• Dr. Carol Tenopir, Principal Investigator

• Dr. Richard Pollard

• Dr. Peiling Wang

General Questions• How can undergraduate students be encouraged to

recognize and use high quality science journal literature?

• What features in a journal literature digital collection would be most useful to undergraduate science students and would encourage use?

• What features would be most useful to graduate students and faculty in the sciences for their students and to encourage use?

Ultimate Goal

• The ultimate goal of this project is to identify, test and implement features of the science journals that will enhance their appeal and encourage sustained use by undergraduate science students

Phase 1

• Focus groups and surveys– Undergraduate students– Graduate students (Graduate Teaching

Assistants)– Faculty– ORNL scientists

Phase I (cont’d)

• Analysis resulted in the definition of the following issues for study: – Variations by grade level

– Variations by subject discipline

– Access means for articles and search strategies

– Variations in type of literature required and faculty recommendations

– Problems with journals and access

– Purposes for using journal articles

Phase II

• March – July 2003

• Testing specified desired features

• Testbed is a full subset of OSTI’s Energy Citations Database

Collection Testbed: Energy Citations Database

Collection Testbed: Elsevier ScienceDirect

Examples of Features to be Tested

• Linking

• Parts of articles attended to

• Navigation (Help, Save)

• Information used in search strategies

• Understanding journal articles

Phase 2 Subjects

• Must have taken physics, chemistry, engineering

• Communications class credit

• Phase 1 participants

• Emails, flyers, reminders, class visits, etc.

• 14 participants to date

Usability Lab

• Built from scratch

• Room 296, Communications Bldg.

• Richard Pollard will discuss