An attempt to map information literacy skills via citation analysis of final year project reports

• Main Author: Edzan, N.N.
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/1772/1/ICOLIS2007.pdf; http://eprints.um.edu.my/1772/4/ICOLIS_2007.ppt; http://eprints.um.edu.my/1772/; http://myais.fsktm.um.edu.my/60/

Throughout the years, librarians have been using citation analysis to determine the usage of their collection for their collection development. Others have used citation analysis to look at undergraduate information behaviour. Various attempts are now being made to relate citation analysis of bibliographies to information literacy competencies by mapping them to the performance indicators of established information literacy standards. Within this context, the main aim of this paper is to analyse the bibliography of the final year project reports produced by the undergraduates from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya. A total of 73 reports were analysed using a pre-designed scoring sheet and results presented include the number of pages, number of citations, types of sources used, usage of Web resources, currency of sources and citation style. The contents analysis of the bibliographies indicates the following: (a) the least number of citations per report is 6 and the most is 165 with the most number of citations within the range of 11 to 20 cites; (b) there are more Web citations than citations to books, journal articles, undergraduate reports, Masters’ dissertations and conference papers; (c) there are more citation to .com than to .org, .edu, .net and other URL extensions; (d) most citations are not dated and most of those dated are from within the last three years with the most current being 2005 and the oldest dated citation is 1935; and (e) most references have their print citations cited correctly but the Web citations cited incorrectly. When mapped to the performance indicators of the ALA/ACRL/STS 2005 Information Literacy Standards for Science and Engineering/Technology, only a handful of indicators could be matched to the information literacy performance indicators. Therefore, bearing this in mind, librarians and academics must make a more conscious effort to play a more important role in imparting information literacy skills to their students’ since it has been identified as a necessary lifelong skill.