Poster presentation. Presenter: Pamela Morgan, Health Sciences Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland

1. Students’ Changing Use of Medical and Nursing Literature
Pamela Morgan, Health Sciences Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Introduction Results
Description: Citation analysis of 30 nursing and 67 Expectation 1 Expectation 3 Expectation 5
medicine Masters theses to determine the citation habits of • With the growth in electronic bibliographic databases and • With the growth in accessibility of electronic journals, • With the growth in Internet use, the proportion of
graduate students, as reflective of their research behaviour the ease of searching and accessing electronic resources, the proportion of articles cited would increase. citations to grey literature would increase, particularly
• the types of literature most frequently used particularly e-journals, the number of citations per thesis would general website use.
• the most frequently consulted journals rise.
• the number and age of their citations
And whether this has changed or remained stable over
time
Outcome:
• See if the literature is being used differently in different
subject areas
• Justify spending allocations relative to types of materials
• Determine whether storage of items is an option for
space shortages
• Tailor instruction programmes
Methodology
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
Expectation 4
• A list of medicine and nursing theses were sorted by year Expectation 2 • An examination of the top 20% of the journals most cited
of publication • Medicine and nursing do use the literature differently
• Obsolescence of materials would play less of a role as the in this study, for each discipline, would reveal a list of
• Every 5th year was selected for study, beginning with the - Medicine has more citations than nursing
ease of searching and accessing materials would result in standard titles in each of the two disciplines.
first medicine thesis in 1973 - Nursing cites monographs more than medicine
older materials being more readily available and therefore
• If fewer than the minimum of three theses per year were - Nursing cites grey literature more than medicine
cited.
available, a random selection of theses from the previous - Nursing cites from the Internet more than medicine
or following year was used to make up the minimum - Journal usage is dispersed across more titles in
• Data from the complete reference list of each thesis was nursing than in medicine
entered into a Refworks template for manipulation • Overall citations counts are declining, indicating
• Counts of types of materials, names of journals, and students are becoming more selective in their citations
dates of publication were compiled and entered into a than in earlier years
spreadsheet for analysis • Use of monographs has declined, indicating that
monographs are not meeting the research needs of the
students
Why Study Theses? • Citation of non-articles, traditionally difficult materials
to find, continues to be infrequent although usage of
• Reflects what our students are actually using some types improving with web access
• Readily available in the library Top Titles consistently cited across multiple years • Citation of articles is not just substantially higher
• Publicly accessible (ethics approval not needed) than other materials, but is increasing, indicating
• Historical study of citation habits possible a collections budget weighted towards journals is
• Graduate students are heavy users of literature justified
• High correlation between graduate student and faculty • Although current materials are used more, significant
usage patterns (Zipp, L.S. (1996) Thesis and dissertation citations as use is made of older materials in all years studied;
indicators of faculty research use of university library journal collections. Library
Resources & Technical Services, 40, 335-342.)
materials in storage must be readily available
• Journal usage is not concentrated on a small set of
titles; there is no easily identifiable set of standard
titles that will meet most research needs
Total Numbers Comparison
• Electronic formats have not had a major impact on
Total theses citation patterns
• Medicine 67 Nursing 30
Total citations Acknowledgements
• Medicine 9593 Nursing 2740
Average number of citations per thesis • Ranjith Garlapati, graduate student, for the data
• Medicine 143.18 Nursing 91.33 compilation
• Memorial University Libraries Research Fund