- Email: [email protected]
Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: A case study of Library and Information Science students in Benin
ARTICLE IN PRESS The International Information & Library Review (2006) 38, 49–55
The International Information & Library Review www.elsevier.com/locate/iilr
Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: A case study of Library and Information Science students in Benin$ Eustache Me ˆgnigbe ˆto 09 BP 477 Saint Michel, Cotonou, Benin
Summary The first and unique training centre in Library and Information Science (LIS) in Benin has been training students since 1982. Ten years after the introduction of Internet in the country, students may have been aware of the importance and the richness of its resources. To what extent do students use Internet-based resources? How do citations to Internet-based resources vary in students’ works over years? This study covers especially LIS students’ dissertations. The results show that the percentage of Internet-based resources cited in dissertations was very low until 2001. Even if the trend line shows an increase starting from 2002, Internet-based resources are very rare in the dissertations (less than 10%). A few students give references to the maximum of Internet-based resources. & 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction The Republic of Benin has two universities: University of Abomey–Calavi (formerly called National University of Benin), created in 1970 and University of Parakou, created in 2001. Both degree many thousand of students each year. But before being $
This is the revised version of an article submitted to the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) 2005 International Paper Competition on Digital Libraries and Information Science and Technology Advances in Developing Countries. The theme of the competition was ‘‘Managing Electronic Information: Cultures and Conflicts—The Developing World Perspective.’’ E-mail address: [email protected].
qualified, the majority of the students have to submit a dissertation. It means that students have to do research, present the results, discuss and comment on them. On this occasion, they need to persuade, to enforce their statement, and sometimes comment, approve or infirm a previous work results, statements or ideas; in other terms, they need to make reference to other works. Since the 1990s, a new medium, the Word Wide Web, has arisen and has triggered the popularisation of the Internet. ‘‘Academic library has lost its control as the sole information provider on the college campus and now competes with a multiplicity of resources available over the Internet’’ (Davis & Cohen, 2001, p. 309). Internet has introduced changes in research communication
1057-2317/$ - see front matter & 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.iilr.2006.04.001
ARTICLE IN PRESS 50 and also in citation behaviours. Some research questions have arisen; for example: (1) What are the motivations of citing Internetbased resources? (2) Are web links analogues of print citations? (3) How are e-resources cited, used, and evaluated? (4) What are the effects of Internet-based resources on citations behaviours? Several functions were attached to citation by citations analysts: citation is considered as a research indicator or in research evaluation; it may be considered as a measure of resources use (Lafouge, 2001). This study aims at measuring the use of the Internet resources by Benin students. In this paper, citation is considered as an indicator of Internet-based resources use and overall, as a measure of Internet use. We hypothesise that the proportion of students that refer to Internet-based increases over years and that students use internet resources to the detriment of traditional resources.
Definition and sample For the purpose of this article, the term Internetbased resources is intended to be ‘‘sources that are available via Web browsers, FTP, gopher, telnet, mailings lists, email or other network tools or protocols, such as the following: e-mail correspondence, messages posted to mailings lists and newsgroups, publications available via the Web, FTP or gopher, which could be self-publications, articles in electronic journals, newsletters or other electronic serials, working documents, technical papers, preprints, conferences papers, books and so forth, commercial electronic resources, for example, on-line database systems (y), and other sites that are reachable via Internet with charges associated with their use, and other electronic sources available from the Internet’’ (Zhang, 2001, p. 629). Mailing list includes such terms as econference, discussion list, electronic discussion group, electronic forum, and listserv (Zhang, 2001, p. 269, in note). The term sitation is used to designate a citation to an Internet-based resource. It has been advanced by McKiernan to designate the relation between sites on the Internet (Rousseau, 1997). The term is employed irrespective of the citer’s medium; hence, its meaning is extended to include references to Internet-based resources made by print material. In the same way, the verb to site
E. Me ˆgnigbe ˆto means the action of citing an Internet-based resource, the term siter means the author of the resource or the resource itself that cited an Internet-based resource, and sited designates a cited Internet-based resource. For the purpose of this study, only dissertations submitted in Library and Information Science (LIS) are mentioned. Indeed, the explosion of the Internet has created challenges to information professionals ‘‘who are redefining (y) their roles for the present and the future’’ (Krishnamurthy & Chan, 2005, p. 45). Library, as information provider is integrating this tool to provide information to its users. Internet is the largest information source ever available. Since students in LIS field learn how to identify, select, acquire, retrieve and disseminate information regardless of its support, in order to better their job, they have to be better trained in the use of the Internet resources, because their other role is to help information seekers to find what they need, to direct them towards relevant information sources. They might be one of the first people having appreciable skills in Internet resources locating. So, LIS students have to be competent to locate and use the Net resources. Information professional’s role as mediator between information resources and users has not ever been as greater as now, because the search engines available on the net are largely deficient and strongly irrational (Rostaing, 2001, p. 69). Library is then the appropriate institution to facilitate access to the several billions of Internet resources pages. Information professional, hence, must be one of the people who might master perfectly orientation tools in Internet search. The extent to which LIS students master Internet resources may be measured by the use they make of the resources.
Methodology The raw materials were the submitted dissertations in LIS field in Benin at the ‘‘Centre de Formation aux Carrie `res de l’Information (CEFOCI).’’ CEFOCI is the training programme in LIS in Benin. It depends on the University of Abomey–Calavi and started in 1982. Each year, 10–20 students graduate in three options: library science, archives administration and documentation. The undergraduates are normally bilingual, and are able to manage information resources. The first batch of students of the Center was graduated in 1984. Since then, about three hundred of students have been trained. Many are employed in public or private sector, in
ARTICLE IN PRESS Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: national and international organisations; some are employed abroad; and their services are highly appreciated by their employer (Hounyo & Sonon, 1997). E-dissertations are not yet allowed in Benin. So, the bibliography appended to LIS dissertations was photocopied and browsed to allow selection of Internet-based resources citations. According to the definition given above, the Internet-based resources mainly encountered in the dissertations are from web, ftp, e-mail and discussion list. A data base has been created to store the following types of information from each dissertation: author’s first name, author’s name, author’s sex,1 year of submission, title, cited LIS dissertations references, number of citations per type of materials,2 LIS dissertations that have cited the current one, and much other information. A specific field was reserved to the eventual coauthors. Originally, the data base was created for multipurpose; which explains why some fields listed above but not related to sitation are present.3 The data base had been created with CDS-ISIS4 software; it was then configured for record creating and updating under IsisMarc5 in order to take advantage of this application’s authority file and codification features. IsisMarc application used to edit the data base records allows control on some fields contents and records validation; it guarantees the quality of the information entered, information retrieval, and therefore the quality of all derived information products. Thanks to the advanced functions of CDS-ISIS formatting language, a printing format was written to output the contents of the data base records into an ASCII delimited format file. The output data were: author name and first name, author sex, submission year, number of references to LIS dissertations, number of cited monographers, number of citations to scientific articles, number of citations to Internet resources, and number of citations to others types of resources, number of 1
The considered sex is those of the first author. The distinguished types are: monographer, article, grey literature (except LIS dissertations), governmental publications, Internet-based resources, electronic resources (except Internetbased resources), dictionary and encyclopaedia, and others. The Others type includes all not distinguished types (as courses notes, oral sources, etc.) 3 Some examples are: type of cited materials, LIS dissertation that have cited the current one, cited LIS, etc. 4 CDS-ISIS is a factual data base management software, developed by UNESCO. It is mainly used in bibliographic data bases management (http://www.unesco.org/isis). 5 IsisMarc is a general CDS-ISIS data base record editing application (http://wwwportal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ ID ¼ 11041&URL_DO ¼ DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION ¼ 201.html). 2
51
citations received from LIS dissertations, year of received citations. The output file was then imported into a statistical data base managed with IDAMS,6 a data analysis and management software. A setup file had then been written to analyse variables. The data base was created for multipurpose. Therefore, in the framework of this study, only variables relative to Internet-base citations were analysed. Although Benin realised its first connexion to Internet in 1995 (Lohento, 1997), the first sitations occurred in LIS dissertations in 1997 (Me ˆgnigbe ˆto & Sagbohan, 2004, p. 47); consequently, this study covers the period from 1997 to 2004.
Results Synchronic analysis The set consists of 121 dissertations submitted at CEFOCI from 1997 to 2004, 42.98% were written by female and 57.02% by male. Ninety-six dissertations out of 121 (79.34%) have never sited; 25 dissertations (20.66%) have sited at least one Internet-based resources. The highest number of sitations is nine and was given by only one dissertation. The mean sitation is 0.7621. Male constitutes 40.0% of siters and 61.46% of non-siters; obviously, female constitutes 60% of siters and 38.54% of non-siters. 28.85% of female and 14.49% of male have sited; 85.51% of male and 71.15% of female have never sited. The total number of sitations over the period 1997–2004 is 91; it means that the 25 siting dissertations have given reference to 91 Internetbased resources over 8 years. This yields to a ratio of 3.64 sitations per siting dissertation. In other words, 20.66% of dissertations have given reference to 100% of cited Internet-based resources; in the same way, 15.70% of dissertations have given reference to 93.41% of cited Internet-based resources, 12.40% of dissertations have given reference to 84.62% of cited Internet-based resources, etc (columns 4 and 7 in Table 1). Figure 1 shows the curve of sitations distribution among the considered dissertations (0 sitation excluded). Although it has a non-regular form, it can be noticed that the number of dissertations decreases when the number of sitation increases. A peak for five sitations is noticed, introducing an exception in the observation. It meant that a few number of dissertations have sited a high number of 6 IDAMS is a data analysis and management software developed by UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org/idams).
ARTICLE IN PRESS 52
E. Me ˆgnigbe ˆto Table 1
Sitations distribution among LIS dissertations in Benin, 1997–2004.
Number of sitations (xi)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total
Frequency (fi)
Cumulative frequency
96 6 4 4 2 4 1 2 1 1 121
Sitations
Cumulative percentage (%)
121 25 19 15 11 9 5 4 2 1
100 20.66 15.70 12.40 9.09 7.44 4.13 3.31 1.65 0.83
Total of sitations (xi*fi)
Cumulative frequency
Cumulative percentage (%)
0 6 8 12 8 20 6 14 8 9 91
91 91 85 77 65 57 37 31 17 9
100 100 93.41 84.62 71.43 62.64 40.66 34.07 18.68 9.89
Percentage of dissertations
6.00% 5.00% 4.00% 3.00% 2.00% 1.00% 0.00% 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Number of sitations Figure 1 Distribution of sitations among LIS dissertations in Benin, 1997–2004.
time and a relatively high number of dissertations a low number of time.
Diachronic analysis First sitations (exactly 2) occurred in 1997 and were referenced by only one dissertation7 among 25. Each year, starting from 1997, there was at least one siting dissertation. From 2001, the number increased substantially. However, the trend line shows an increase from 1997 to 2004. More than half of all the sitations over the period (51.65%, N ¼ 91, which corresponds to 47 sitations) occurred 7 Dissertation submitted by Ken Lohento (Radioscopie de la connexion du Be´nin a ` l’Internet), cited in bibliography.
over the three last years (2002–2004); they were referenced by 48% of siting dissertations (47). The annual mean sitation (annual number of sitations divided by annual number of submitted dissertations) is very high starting from 2002. Ratio I indicates the annual average number of sitations per siting dissertation. Its minimum value is 2, recorded in 1997 and the maximum is 7 and was noticed in 1999. Ratio I is a corrected mean, indeed, it takes into account siting dissertations only. Ratio II is very high for the years 2001–2004. It represents each year’s contribution (in percentage) to the total period sitations. Ratio III indicates the annual proportion of siting dissertations among all submitted dissertations. Although a pick is recorded in 1998 (23.08%), the trend line is increasing.
ARTICLE IN PRESS Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: Table 2
53
Sitation and relative indicators distribution.
Year
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Total
Siting dissertations [a] Sitations [b] Submitted dissertations [c] Mean sitation [b/c] Ratio I [b/a] Ratio II [b/n] (%), N ¼ 91 Ratio III [a/c] (%) Sitations: Cumulative percentages Siters: Cumulative percentages Total citations
1 2 25 0.08 2.00 2.20 4.00 100 100
3 11 13 0.85 3.67 12.09 23.08 97.80 96.00
1 7 16 0.44 7.00 7.69 6.25 85.71 84.00
2 5 14 0.36 2.50 5.49 14.29 78.02 80.00
6 19 25 0.76 3.17 20.88 24.00 72.53 72.00
4 17 10 1.70 4.25 18.68 40.00 51.65 48.00
2 12 4 3.00 6.00 13.19 50.00 32.97 32.00
6 18 14 1.29 3.00 19.78 42.86 19.78 24.00
25 91 121 0.76 3.64 100 20.66 – –
Notes: Ratio I: ratio of number of sitations to number of siting dissertations; Ratio II: ratio of number of sitations to total sitations on the period (N ¼ 91); Ratio III: ratio of number of siting dissertations to number of submitted dissertations.
The highest mean sitation is recorded in 2003 and the lowest in 1997. The average number of sitations per year indicates a high number in the year 2003 and the minimum in 1997. Although lower values of these indicators are recorded in 2004 in comparison to those in 2003, the increasing trend is not questioned. The highest value of Ratio I is noticed in 1999 and its lowest value in 1997. The maximum value of Ratio II occurs in 2001. The highest proportion of siters (Ratio III) is recorded 2003 (50%), followed by 2004 (42.80%) and 2002 (40%). These three ratios indicate individually and collectively an obvious divide line in LIS students’ sitation behaviours starting from 2001. About three quarters of sitations occurred over the four last years (2001–2002) by about the same proportion of siters (Table 2).
Sitations and citations in LIS dissertations Students use to cite different types of material in their dissertation. We have distinguished books, parts of books, journals, articles, dissertations, thesis, letters, courses, audio-visual materials, archives material, oral sources, governmental publications, CD-ROM resources and Internet-based resources as defined in this study. Globally, on the period, book is the most cited type of materials followed by article, then by thesis and dissertations. Internet-based resources come then with 4.85% of all citations. The annual proportion of sitations goes from 0.75% (in 1997) to 22.64% in 2003. Even though this percentage varies through years, its trends line still increasing. The pick noticed in 2003 may be explained by the few number of dissertations submitted that year (Table 1).
As dissertations are concerned individually, it is noticed that an important proportion of them never pass 10% of internet-based resources in their total citation (32%); 28% of dissertations have reference 10–20% internet-based resources in their bibliography, 24% have referenced 16% of internet resources (Fig. 2). It means that 60% of dissertations have less than 20% in their bibliography.
Discussion and conclusion The objective of this paper was to measure the use LIS students in Benin made of Internet-based resources by citations they have made in their dissertation. The synchronic analysis revealed that only 20.66% of dissertations cited Internet-based resources. This is a relatively weak proportion. A closer analyse shows that the sitation distribution is highly concentrated; for instance, 20.66% cited 100% of Internet-based resources; 15.70% cited 93.41% of total Internet-based resources, 12.40% cited 84.62% of total Internet-based resources. The Gini index calculated is G ¼ 0.929. It means that a few dissertations have referenced the maximum of sitations; in the other hand, a high number of dissertations have referenced a few number of sitations. This shows the weakness of use of Internet as information sources in research by LIS students. When taking into account the proportion of Internet-based resources in dissertations bibliography, only 16% of siting dissertations passed 30% of Internet-based resources in their bibliography. The conclusion is that a few dissertations have really cited Internet-based resources. Among them
ARTICLE IN PRESS 54
E. Me ˆgnigbe ˆto 35
Percentage of dissertations
30 25 20 15 10 5 0 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Proportion of sitations in citations (%)
Figure 2 Proportions of sitations among citations in LIS students dissertations.
Table 3
Percentage of sitations in LIS dissertations over years.
Citations Sitations Total Proportion of sitations (%)
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Total
266 2 268 0.75
220 11 231 4.76
202 7 209 3.35
178 5 183 2.73
305 19 324 5.86
237 17 254 6.69
41 12 53 22.64
297 18 315 5.71
1746 91 1837 4.95
a majority (60%) never pass 20% of their total citation. Table 3 shows that sitations proportion increases over years but still weak. It is only in 2003 that total sitation pass 20% of total citations. For instance, less than 32% of siting dissertations have less than 10% of sitations in their bibliography. y It means that students cite less e-resource than traditional material. This confirms the conclusion of Zhang’s study that e-resources were still less much frequently than print material (Zhang, 2001), and also that of Kushkowski’s that the proportion of Web citations has increased over time, but they are still only a small percentage of total citations (Kushkowski, 2005, p. 271). Ratio III also increases over years; this confirms a conclusion of Zhang’s study that proportions of authors that cite e-resources in their research increase (Zhang, 2001). The weakness of this indicator may has been caused by the absence of Internet in the University libraries and also by the absence of a course on Internet in the training program. It was noted that starting from 2002, it began increasing and became appreciable and acceptable. For instance, it passed one-third in 2002 (2002 ¼ 40%; 2003 ¼ 50% and 2004 ¼ 42.86%). These three years contribution to the total sitations on the period is very high (51.65%). 2002 may be
considered as the year students began being aware of the richness and the importance of Internet as information sources for research. But it was not due to some lucky coincidences. Indeed, courses on Internet search and HTML language had been introduced in the program in 1999. And students of the three classes of the training program submitted their dissertations, respectively, in 2000–2002. It means that these courses help them in discovering the Net and its resources and may have influenced and reinforced their awareness of the richness of its resources. As of May 2005, only one university school library8 (out of 15) offers Internet services to students. Even the main library of the University, which deserves more than 90% of the UAC students, does not yet provide Internet access to its users. However, there is on the campus the Campus Nume ´rique Francophone de Cotonou (CNFC), a local representation of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), the mission of which is to provide access to electronic resources to scholars and students. The CNFC users are estimated to three thousand. This means that students are not motivated in using the resources available on the Net. Measures might be taken to facilitate Internet research and information use. 8
Faculte ´ des Sciences Agronomiques (Agronomy Faculty).
ARTICLE IN PRESS Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: This study does not aim at checking the incidence of sitations on traditional resources citations, or at testing the persistence of Internet-resources address. Further research is needed, with a sample broadly defined, e.g. extended to another training field in other college to validate the findings of the present study. The database that serves in this paper was created for multipurpose in the framework of a project which pilot phase covers only LIS dissertations. It may be used to answer further research questions such as:
Do LIS students cite Internet-based resources than other field students? What are the effects of Internet on students’ citation behaviours? What types of Internet-based resources do students use to cite? What are the most cited Internet-resources domains?
References Davis, P. M., & Cohen, S. A. (2001). The effect of the web on undergraduate citation behaviour: 1996–1999. Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 52(4), 309–314. Hounyo, N., & Sonon, S. (1997). Training in sciences and technology of information in the center of formation to the careers of information: Evaluation [online]. Memory of end of training in sciences and technology of information, option documentation (72pp). Abomey–Calavi: CEFOCI-ENA/ UNB. Available: /http://www.adadb.bj.refer.org/IMG/doc/ memocefoci_steph_narc.docS (Accessed: April 28, 2005) (in French).
55
Krishnamurthy, M., & Chan, W. S. (2005). Implementation of library portals for information resources: A case study of the Indian statistical Institute, Bangalore (ISIB). The International Information & Library Review, 37, 45–50. Kushkowski, J. D. (2005). Web citation by graduate students: A comparison of print and electronic theses. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 5(2), 259–276. Lafouge, T. (2001). Mathematic model of document circulation: Usage distribution, utilization and document continuity: Usage, utilization and documents content distribution: An example from scientific periodical articles [online]. Available: /http:// archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/archives0/00/00/00/88/sic_ 00000088_02/sic_00000088.pdfS (Accessed: April 9, 2005) (in French). Lohento, K. (1997). Radioscopy of Benin connection to Internet [online]. Undergraduate dissertation. Abomey–Calavi: CEFOCI-ENA/UNB. Available: /http://www.iafric.net/benin/memo/ index.htmlS (Accessed: March 1, 2004) (in French). Me ˆgnigbe ˆto, E., & Sagbohan, J. (Eds.). (2004). Metric study of undergraduate dissertations in information science in Benin [online] (in French). (1st ed.) (90pp). Available: /http://www. adadb.bj.refer.org/IMG/pdf/CefociMetrique-I.pdfS (Accessed: May 20, 2005). Rostaing, H. (2001). The Web and its tools of orientation: How better to understand the information available on the Internet by the analysis of references? Bulletin des Bibliothe `ques de France, 46(1), 68–77 (in French). Rousseau, R. (1997). Sitation: An exploratory study [online]. Cybermetric, 1(1), 1997. Available: /http://www.cindoc.csic. es/cybermetrics/articles/v1i1p1.htmlS (Accessed: August 15, 2004). UNESCO. IDAMS statistical software [online]. Available: /http:// www.unesco.org/idamsS (Accessed: January 26, 2005). UNESCO. CDS/ISIS database software [online]. Available: /http://www.unesco.org/isisS (Accessed: January 26, 2005). UNESCO. IsisMarc [online]. Available: /http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ en / ev.php-URL_ID = 11041&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION= 201.htmlS (Accessed: January 26, 2005). Zhang, Y. (2001). Scholarly use of Internet-based electronic resources. Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 52(8), 628–654.
The International Information & Library Review www.elsevier.com/locate/iilr
Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: A case study of Library and Information Science students in Benin$ Eustache Me ˆgnigbe ˆto 09 BP 477 Saint Michel, Cotonou, Benin
Summary The first and unique training centre in Library and Information Science (LIS) in Benin has been training students since 1982. Ten years after the introduction of Internet in the country, students may have been aware of the importance and the richness of its resources. To what extent do students use Internet-based resources? How do citations to Internet-based resources vary in students’ works over years? This study covers especially LIS students’ dissertations. The results show that the percentage of Internet-based resources cited in dissertations was very low until 2001. Even if the trend line shows an increase starting from 2002, Internet-based resources are very rare in the dissertations (less than 10%). A few students give references to the maximum of Internet-based resources. & 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction The Republic of Benin has two universities: University of Abomey–Calavi (formerly called National University of Benin), created in 1970 and University of Parakou, created in 2001. Both degree many thousand of students each year. But before being $
This is the revised version of an article submitted to the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG III) 2005 International Paper Competition on Digital Libraries and Information Science and Technology Advances in Developing Countries. The theme of the competition was ‘‘Managing Electronic Information: Cultures and Conflicts—The Developing World Perspective.’’ E-mail address: [email protected].
qualified, the majority of the students have to submit a dissertation. It means that students have to do research, present the results, discuss and comment on them. On this occasion, they need to persuade, to enforce their statement, and sometimes comment, approve or infirm a previous work results, statements or ideas; in other terms, they need to make reference to other works. Since the 1990s, a new medium, the Word Wide Web, has arisen and has triggered the popularisation of the Internet. ‘‘Academic library has lost its control as the sole information provider on the college campus and now competes with a multiplicity of resources available over the Internet’’ (Davis & Cohen, 2001, p. 309). Internet has introduced changes in research communication
1057-2317/$ - see front matter & 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.iilr.2006.04.001
ARTICLE IN PRESS 50 and also in citation behaviours. Some research questions have arisen; for example: (1) What are the motivations of citing Internetbased resources? (2) Are web links analogues of print citations? (3) How are e-resources cited, used, and evaluated? (4) What are the effects of Internet-based resources on citations behaviours? Several functions were attached to citation by citations analysts: citation is considered as a research indicator or in research evaluation; it may be considered as a measure of resources use (Lafouge, 2001). This study aims at measuring the use of the Internet resources by Benin students. In this paper, citation is considered as an indicator of Internet-based resources use and overall, as a measure of Internet use. We hypothesise that the proportion of students that refer to Internet-based increases over years and that students use internet resources to the detriment of traditional resources.
Definition and sample For the purpose of this article, the term Internetbased resources is intended to be ‘‘sources that are available via Web browsers, FTP, gopher, telnet, mailings lists, email or other network tools or protocols, such as the following: e-mail correspondence, messages posted to mailings lists and newsgroups, publications available via the Web, FTP or gopher, which could be self-publications, articles in electronic journals, newsletters or other electronic serials, working documents, technical papers, preprints, conferences papers, books and so forth, commercial electronic resources, for example, on-line database systems (y), and other sites that are reachable via Internet with charges associated with their use, and other electronic sources available from the Internet’’ (Zhang, 2001, p. 629). Mailing list includes such terms as econference, discussion list, electronic discussion group, electronic forum, and listserv (Zhang, 2001, p. 269, in note). The term sitation is used to designate a citation to an Internet-based resource. It has been advanced by McKiernan to designate the relation between sites on the Internet (Rousseau, 1997). The term is employed irrespective of the citer’s medium; hence, its meaning is extended to include references to Internet-based resources made by print material. In the same way, the verb to site
E. Me ˆgnigbe ˆto means the action of citing an Internet-based resource, the term siter means the author of the resource or the resource itself that cited an Internet-based resource, and sited designates a cited Internet-based resource. For the purpose of this study, only dissertations submitted in Library and Information Science (LIS) are mentioned. Indeed, the explosion of the Internet has created challenges to information professionals ‘‘who are redefining (y) their roles for the present and the future’’ (Krishnamurthy & Chan, 2005, p. 45). Library, as information provider is integrating this tool to provide information to its users. Internet is the largest information source ever available. Since students in LIS field learn how to identify, select, acquire, retrieve and disseminate information regardless of its support, in order to better their job, they have to be better trained in the use of the Internet resources, because their other role is to help information seekers to find what they need, to direct them towards relevant information sources. They might be one of the first people having appreciable skills in Internet resources locating. So, LIS students have to be competent to locate and use the Net resources. Information professional’s role as mediator between information resources and users has not ever been as greater as now, because the search engines available on the net are largely deficient and strongly irrational (Rostaing, 2001, p. 69). Library is then the appropriate institution to facilitate access to the several billions of Internet resources pages. Information professional, hence, must be one of the people who might master perfectly orientation tools in Internet search. The extent to which LIS students master Internet resources may be measured by the use they make of the resources.
Methodology The raw materials were the submitted dissertations in LIS field in Benin at the ‘‘Centre de Formation aux Carrie `res de l’Information (CEFOCI).’’ CEFOCI is the training programme in LIS in Benin. It depends on the University of Abomey–Calavi and started in 1982. Each year, 10–20 students graduate in three options: library science, archives administration and documentation. The undergraduates are normally bilingual, and are able to manage information resources. The first batch of students of the Center was graduated in 1984. Since then, about three hundred of students have been trained. Many are employed in public or private sector, in
ARTICLE IN PRESS Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: national and international organisations; some are employed abroad; and their services are highly appreciated by their employer (Hounyo & Sonon, 1997). E-dissertations are not yet allowed in Benin. So, the bibliography appended to LIS dissertations was photocopied and browsed to allow selection of Internet-based resources citations. According to the definition given above, the Internet-based resources mainly encountered in the dissertations are from web, ftp, e-mail and discussion list. A data base has been created to store the following types of information from each dissertation: author’s first name, author’s name, author’s sex,1 year of submission, title, cited LIS dissertations references, number of citations per type of materials,2 LIS dissertations that have cited the current one, and much other information. A specific field was reserved to the eventual coauthors. Originally, the data base was created for multipurpose; which explains why some fields listed above but not related to sitation are present.3 The data base had been created with CDS-ISIS4 software; it was then configured for record creating and updating under IsisMarc5 in order to take advantage of this application’s authority file and codification features. IsisMarc application used to edit the data base records allows control on some fields contents and records validation; it guarantees the quality of the information entered, information retrieval, and therefore the quality of all derived information products. Thanks to the advanced functions of CDS-ISIS formatting language, a printing format was written to output the contents of the data base records into an ASCII delimited format file. The output data were: author name and first name, author sex, submission year, number of references to LIS dissertations, number of cited monographers, number of citations to scientific articles, number of citations to Internet resources, and number of citations to others types of resources, number of 1
The considered sex is those of the first author. The distinguished types are: monographer, article, grey literature (except LIS dissertations), governmental publications, Internet-based resources, electronic resources (except Internetbased resources), dictionary and encyclopaedia, and others. The Others type includes all not distinguished types (as courses notes, oral sources, etc.) 3 Some examples are: type of cited materials, LIS dissertation that have cited the current one, cited LIS, etc. 4 CDS-ISIS is a factual data base management software, developed by UNESCO. It is mainly used in bibliographic data bases management (http://www.unesco.org/isis). 5 IsisMarc is a general CDS-ISIS data base record editing application (http://wwwportal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ ID ¼ 11041&URL_DO ¼ DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION ¼ 201.html). 2
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citations received from LIS dissertations, year of received citations. The output file was then imported into a statistical data base managed with IDAMS,6 a data analysis and management software. A setup file had then been written to analyse variables. The data base was created for multipurpose. Therefore, in the framework of this study, only variables relative to Internet-base citations were analysed. Although Benin realised its first connexion to Internet in 1995 (Lohento, 1997), the first sitations occurred in LIS dissertations in 1997 (Me ˆgnigbe ˆto & Sagbohan, 2004, p. 47); consequently, this study covers the period from 1997 to 2004.
Results Synchronic analysis The set consists of 121 dissertations submitted at CEFOCI from 1997 to 2004, 42.98% were written by female and 57.02% by male. Ninety-six dissertations out of 121 (79.34%) have never sited; 25 dissertations (20.66%) have sited at least one Internet-based resources. The highest number of sitations is nine and was given by only one dissertation. The mean sitation is 0.7621. Male constitutes 40.0% of siters and 61.46% of non-siters; obviously, female constitutes 60% of siters and 38.54% of non-siters. 28.85% of female and 14.49% of male have sited; 85.51% of male and 71.15% of female have never sited. The total number of sitations over the period 1997–2004 is 91; it means that the 25 siting dissertations have given reference to 91 Internetbased resources over 8 years. This yields to a ratio of 3.64 sitations per siting dissertation. In other words, 20.66% of dissertations have given reference to 100% of cited Internet-based resources; in the same way, 15.70% of dissertations have given reference to 93.41% of cited Internet-based resources, 12.40% of dissertations have given reference to 84.62% of cited Internet-based resources, etc (columns 4 and 7 in Table 1). Figure 1 shows the curve of sitations distribution among the considered dissertations (0 sitation excluded). Although it has a non-regular form, it can be noticed that the number of dissertations decreases when the number of sitation increases. A peak for five sitations is noticed, introducing an exception in the observation. It meant that a few number of dissertations have sited a high number of 6 IDAMS is a data analysis and management software developed by UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org/idams).
ARTICLE IN PRESS 52
E. Me ˆgnigbe ˆto Table 1
Sitations distribution among LIS dissertations in Benin, 1997–2004.
Number of sitations (xi)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total
Frequency (fi)
Cumulative frequency
96 6 4 4 2 4 1 2 1 1 121
Sitations
Cumulative percentage (%)
121 25 19 15 11 9 5 4 2 1
100 20.66 15.70 12.40 9.09 7.44 4.13 3.31 1.65 0.83
Total of sitations (xi*fi)
Cumulative frequency
Cumulative percentage (%)
0 6 8 12 8 20 6 14 8 9 91
91 91 85 77 65 57 37 31 17 9
100 100 93.41 84.62 71.43 62.64 40.66 34.07 18.68 9.89
Percentage of dissertations
6.00% 5.00% 4.00% 3.00% 2.00% 1.00% 0.00% 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Number of sitations Figure 1 Distribution of sitations among LIS dissertations in Benin, 1997–2004.
time and a relatively high number of dissertations a low number of time.
Diachronic analysis First sitations (exactly 2) occurred in 1997 and were referenced by only one dissertation7 among 25. Each year, starting from 1997, there was at least one siting dissertation. From 2001, the number increased substantially. However, the trend line shows an increase from 1997 to 2004. More than half of all the sitations over the period (51.65%, N ¼ 91, which corresponds to 47 sitations) occurred 7 Dissertation submitted by Ken Lohento (Radioscopie de la connexion du Be´nin a ` l’Internet), cited in bibliography.
over the three last years (2002–2004); they were referenced by 48% of siting dissertations (47). The annual mean sitation (annual number of sitations divided by annual number of submitted dissertations) is very high starting from 2002. Ratio I indicates the annual average number of sitations per siting dissertation. Its minimum value is 2, recorded in 1997 and the maximum is 7 and was noticed in 1999. Ratio I is a corrected mean, indeed, it takes into account siting dissertations only. Ratio II is very high for the years 2001–2004. It represents each year’s contribution (in percentage) to the total period sitations. Ratio III indicates the annual proportion of siting dissertations among all submitted dissertations. Although a pick is recorded in 1998 (23.08%), the trend line is increasing.
ARTICLE IN PRESS Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: Table 2
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Sitation and relative indicators distribution.
Year
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Total
Siting dissertations [a] Sitations [b] Submitted dissertations [c] Mean sitation [b/c] Ratio I [b/a] Ratio II [b/n] (%), N ¼ 91 Ratio III [a/c] (%) Sitations: Cumulative percentages Siters: Cumulative percentages Total citations
1 2 25 0.08 2.00 2.20 4.00 100 100
3 11 13 0.85 3.67 12.09 23.08 97.80 96.00
1 7 16 0.44 7.00 7.69 6.25 85.71 84.00
2 5 14 0.36 2.50 5.49 14.29 78.02 80.00
6 19 25 0.76 3.17 20.88 24.00 72.53 72.00
4 17 10 1.70 4.25 18.68 40.00 51.65 48.00
2 12 4 3.00 6.00 13.19 50.00 32.97 32.00
6 18 14 1.29 3.00 19.78 42.86 19.78 24.00
25 91 121 0.76 3.64 100 20.66 – –
Notes: Ratio I: ratio of number of sitations to number of siting dissertations; Ratio II: ratio of number of sitations to total sitations on the period (N ¼ 91); Ratio III: ratio of number of siting dissertations to number of submitted dissertations.
The highest mean sitation is recorded in 2003 and the lowest in 1997. The average number of sitations per year indicates a high number in the year 2003 and the minimum in 1997. Although lower values of these indicators are recorded in 2004 in comparison to those in 2003, the increasing trend is not questioned. The highest value of Ratio I is noticed in 1999 and its lowest value in 1997. The maximum value of Ratio II occurs in 2001. The highest proportion of siters (Ratio III) is recorded 2003 (50%), followed by 2004 (42.80%) and 2002 (40%). These three ratios indicate individually and collectively an obvious divide line in LIS students’ sitation behaviours starting from 2001. About three quarters of sitations occurred over the four last years (2001–2002) by about the same proportion of siters (Table 2).
Sitations and citations in LIS dissertations Students use to cite different types of material in their dissertation. We have distinguished books, parts of books, journals, articles, dissertations, thesis, letters, courses, audio-visual materials, archives material, oral sources, governmental publications, CD-ROM resources and Internet-based resources as defined in this study. Globally, on the period, book is the most cited type of materials followed by article, then by thesis and dissertations. Internet-based resources come then with 4.85% of all citations. The annual proportion of sitations goes from 0.75% (in 1997) to 22.64% in 2003. Even though this percentage varies through years, its trends line still increasing. The pick noticed in 2003 may be explained by the few number of dissertations submitted that year (Table 1).
As dissertations are concerned individually, it is noticed that an important proportion of them never pass 10% of internet-based resources in their total citation (32%); 28% of dissertations have reference 10–20% internet-based resources in their bibliography, 24% have referenced 16% of internet resources (Fig. 2). It means that 60% of dissertations have less than 20% in their bibliography.
Discussion and conclusion The objective of this paper was to measure the use LIS students in Benin made of Internet-based resources by citations they have made in their dissertation. The synchronic analysis revealed that only 20.66% of dissertations cited Internet-based resources. This is a relatively weak proportion. A closer analyse shows that the sitation distribution is highly concentrated; for instance, 20.66% cited 100% of Internet-based resources; 15.70% cited 93.41% of total Internet-based resources, 12.40% cited 84.62% of total Internet-based resources. The Gini index calculated is G ¼ 0.929. It means that a few dissertations have referenced the maximum of sitations; in the other hand, a high number of dissertations have referenced a few number of sitations. This shows the weakness of use of Internet as information sources in research by LIS students. When taking into account the proportion of Internet-based resources in dissertations bibliography, only 16% of siting dissertations passed 30% of Internet-based resources in their bibliography. The conclusion is that a few dissertations have really cited Internet-based resources. Among them
ARTICLE IN PRESS 54
E. Me ˆgnigbe ˆto 35
Percentage of dissertations
30 25 20 15 10 5 0 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Proportion of sitations in citations (%)
Figure 2 Proportions of sitations among citations in LIS students dissertations.
Table 3
Percentage of sitations in LIS dissertations over years.
Citations Sitations Total Proportion of sitations (%)
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Total
266 2 268 0.75
220 11 231 4.76
202 7 209 3.35
178 5 183 2.73
305 19 324 5.86
237 17 254 6.69
41 12 53 22.64
297 18 315 5.71
1746 91 1837 4.95
a majority (60%) never pass 20% of their total citation. Table 3 shows that sitations proportion increases over years but still weak. It is only in 2003 that total sitation pass 20% of total citations. For instance, less than 32% of siting dissertations have less than 10% of sitations in their bibliography. y It means that students cite less e-resource than traditional material. This confirms the conclusion of Zhang’s study that e-resources were still less much frequently than print material (Zhang, 2001), and also that of Kushkowski’s that the proportion of Web citations has increased over time, but they are still only a small percentage of total citations (Kushkowski, 2005, p. 271). Ratio III also increases over years; this confirms a conclusion of Zhang’s study that proportions of authors that cite e-resources in their research increase (Zhang, 2001). The weakness of this indicator may has been caused by the absence of Internet in the University libraries and also by the absence of a course on Internet in the training program. It was noted that starting from 2002, it began increasing and became appreciable and acceptable. For instance, it passed one-third in 2002 (2002 ¼ 40%; 2003 ¼ 50% and 2004 ¼ 42.86%). These three years contribution to the total sitations on the period is very high (51.65%). 2002 may be
considered as the year students began being aware of the richness and the importance of Internet as information sources for research. But it was not due to some lucky coincidences. Indeed, courses on Internet search and HTML language had been introduced in the program in 1999. And students of the three classes of the training program submitted their dissertations, respectively, in 2000–2002. It means that these courses help them in discovering the Net and its resources and may have influenced and reinforced their awareness of the richness of its resources. As of May 2005, only one university school library8 (out of 15) offers Internet services to students. Even the main library of the University, which deserves more than 90% of the UAC students, does not yet provide Internet access to its users. However, there is on the campus the Campus Nume ´rique Francophone de Cotonou (CNFC), a local representation of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), the mission of which is to provide access to electronic resources to scholars and students. The CNFC users are estimated to three thousand. This means that students are not motivated in using the resources available on the Net. Measures might be taken to facilitate Internet research and information use. 8
Faculte ´ des Sciences Agronomiques (Agronomy Faculty).
ARTICLE IN PRESS Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: This study does not aim at checking the incidence of sitations on traditional resources citations, or at testing the persistence of Internet-resources address. Further research is needed, with a sample broadly defined, e.g. extended to another training field in other college to validate the findings of the present study. The database that serves in this paper was created for multipurpose in the framework of a project which pilot phase covers only LIS dissertations. It may be used to answer further research questions such as:
Do LIS students cite Internet-based resources than other field students? What are the effects of Internet on students’ citation behaviours? What types of Internet-based resources do students use to cite? What are the most cited Internet-resources domains?
References Davis, P. M., & Cohen, S. A. (2001). The effect of the web on undergraduate citation behaviour: 1996–1999. Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 52(4), 309–314. Hounyo, N., & Sonon, S. (1997). Training in sciences and technology of information in the center of formation to the careers of information: Evaluation [online]. Memory of end of training in sciences and technology of information, option documentation (72pp). Abomey–Calavi: CEFOCI-ENA/ UNB. Available: /http://www.adadb.bj.refer.org/IMG/doc/ memocefoci_steph_narc.docS (Accessed: April 28, 2005) (in French).
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Krishnamurthy, M., & Chan, W. S. (2005). Implementation of library portals for information resources: A case study of the Indian statistical Institute, Bangalore (ISIB). The International Information & Library Review, 37, 45–50. Kushkowski, J. D. (2005). Web citation by graduate students: A comparison of print and electronic theses. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 5(2), 259–276. Lafouge, T. (2001). Mathematic model of document circulation: Usage distribution, utilization and document continuity: Usage, utilization and documents content distribution: An example from scientific periodical articles [online]. Available: /http:// archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/archives0/00/00/00/88/sic_ 00000088_02/sic_00000088.pdfS (Accessed: April 9, 2005) (in French). Lohento, K. (1997). Radioscopy of Benin connection to Internet [online]. Undergraduate dissertation. Abomey–Calavi: CEFOCI-ENA/UNB. Available: /http://www.iafric.net/benin/memo/ index.htmlS (Accessed: March 1, 2004) (in French). Me ˆgnigbe ˆto, E., & Sagbohan, J. (Eds.). (2004). Metric study of undergraduate dissertations in information science in Benin [online] (in French). (1st ed.) (90pp). Available: /http://www. adadb.bj.refer.org/IMG/pdf/CefociMetrique-I.pdfS (Accessed: May 20, 2005). Rostaing, H. (2001). The Web and its tools of orientation: How better to understand the information available on the Internet by the analysis of references? Bulletin des Bibliothe `ques de France, 46(1), 68–77 (in French). Rousseau, R. (1997). Sitation: An exploratory study [online]. Cybermetric, 1(1), 1997. Available: /http://www.cindoc.csic. es/cybermetrics/articles/v1i1p1.htmlS (Accessed: August 15, 2004). UNESCO. IDAMS statistical software [online]. Available: /http:// www.unesco.org/idamsS (Accessed: January 26, 2005). UNESCO. CDS/ISIS database software [online]. Available: /http://www.unesco.org/isisS (Accessed: January 26, 2005). UNESCO. IsisMarc [online]. Available: /http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ en / ev.php-URL_ID = 11041&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION= 201.htmlS (Accessed: January 26, 2005). Zhang, Y. (2001). Scholarly use of Internet-based electronic resources. Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 52(8), 628–654.