[Sigcr-l] A request from a M.A. student who writes her thesis in Information Science

[שרית ילוב]

Dear Sir or Madam,
 
I would like to ask for your help in spreading the following message through your site and other channels of communication.
 
Thank you for any help,
Sarit Yalov
 
***

Dear librarian or information specialist,

For a revolutionary M.A. thesis, I need your help!
As a student at the department of Information Science in Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel (http://www.is.biu.ac.il), I am looking for people who are willing to dedicate some 15-30 minutes for browsing the shelves and the catalog at their near by library, and let me know (by email) their retrieval results.
Each participant is expected to visit a library with:
1. At least 5,000 English titles
2. Open shelf
3. OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) - both in-house and on the Web
Each participant is expected to browse printed publications only (books, booklets, dissertations, conference papers etc., NOT periodicals, audio/visual media or electronic resources) - in English - on three topics:
1. The English sonnet (literature, Humanities)
2. Religion in modern Poland (sociology, Social science)
3. Genetic engineering in crops (biology, Natural science)
The first 'browsing act' should take place near the shelves, either by reaching the 'right area (or areas)' intuitively or with the assistance of a librarian (without using the catalog at all).
The second 'browsing act' should take place at least 24 hours later, near the OPAC, using it spontaneously, without trying to 'catch' specific publications being retrieved near the shelf the day before.
A publication would be considered relevant to one of the three mentioned above topics if at least 5 of its pages deals with the topic.
The data needed for my research is:
1. A list of the English publications retrieved by the shelves - divided by the three topics - including each publication's title and author.
2. A list of the English publications retrieved by the catalog - divided by the three topics - including each publication's title and author.
3. The date of the shelf browsing and the date of the catalog browsing.
4. The length of time needed for each of the 'browsing acts':
A. The shelf browsing - the length of time from entering the library until the list of the retrieved publications is complete.
B. The catalog browsing - the length of time from starting the catalog browsing until the list of the retrieved publications is complete.
5. The name and address of the library.
6. The classification system used in that library (Dewey, UDC, LC etc.)
The two kinds of browsing acts should be natural and relaxed, without trying to fulfill any assumed criteria. They should be handled as if the research volunteer is trying to get the materials needed for the study. The amount of publications being retrieved and the length of time needed for each retrieval have no meaning as such, only the general statistical tendency matters.  
I will be grateful to anyone who will send me their results, and I promise to email him or her (in some some months) the final findings of my research and the surprising argument they serve.

Thank you all for your attention and cooperation

Sarit Yalov (Ms.)

aylid at hotmail.com or dilya at hotmail.co.il (better mail the results to both email adresses)