Attitudes Toward the Contemporary Role of the Library Media Specialist in the Overall Elementary School Program in North Central Texas (open access)

Attitudes Toward the Contemporary Role of the Library Media Specialist in the Overall Elementary School Program in North Central Texas

The purpose of this study, in addition to measuring and comparing attitudes of teachers, principals and library media specialists toward the role of the school library media specialist, was to identify and measure factors contributing to those attitudes. Nine factors were identified. Further path analysis revealed that the performance level of the library media specialist had the most influence on principals' and teachers' attitudes toward the Consultant, Technological and Instructional Roles. For principals and teachers, staff development had the most influence on attitudes toward the Management Role, while involvement in the school-wide program was most influential for library media specialists.
Date: December 1989
Creator: Roach, Catharyn
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Investigation of Differences in Public Library Usage Patterns Between Gifted Adults and Members of the General Public (open access)

An Investigation of Differences in Public Library Usage Patterns Between Gifted Adults and Members of the General Public

The purpose of this research was to isolate the variable giftedness in a pipulation and determine whether that variable could be used as a predictor of public library use. The analysis of data indicated that public library use was higher for the general public than for the gifted adults. There was less variation among the factors of age, level of education, and public library use for the gifted adults than for the general public. Books as a resource for information were mentioned by the general adults public more frequently than by the gifted adults. Friends were listed more often as an information resource by the gifted population than by the public. Gifted adults both read and owned more books than did the general public. There was no correlation between amount of reading and number of library visits in either sample. 35 of the general public has a Library Usage Index Value of less than 4, 97 of the gifted adults did. There was almost no difference between the first ten information sources listen by both samples.
Date: December 1989
Creator: Foudray, Rita Catherine Schoch
System: The UNT Digital Library
Factors Influencing Older Adults' Patterns of Information Acquisition (open access)

Factors Influencing Older Adults' Patterns of Information Acquisition

A group of 101 older adults (sixty-five years of age and over) who lived independently in three retirement apartment residences in Denton, Texas, were asked about their patterns of reading, television viewing, and radio listening habits for two periods in their lives: (1) at age forty to fifty-five and (2) at the present. Respondents were asked about their use of external information sources (public library, grocery store, newsstand, etc.) and their use of proximate information sources (radio, friends/relatives, television, etc.) They were also asked about access to transportation, income satisfaction, status of general health, vision, hearing, physical mobility and reasons for utilizing various information sources. Four hypotheses relating changes in health, environment, economic status, and education to reasons for reading and use of information sources were tested through the use of t-tests, regression analysis and analysis of variance. Within this group of older adults, use of external information sources decreased from the past to the present. There was, however, no change in the use of information sources located in or near the residence as difficulties in these areas increased. A relationship was found between educational level and reading for pleasure earlier in life. Also, those with higher educational levels reported …
Date: May 1989
Creator: Barnett, Mary Jane, 1952-
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Use of an Academic Library by University Students (open access)

The Use of an Academic Library by University Students

Academic librarians have for a number of decades been interested in understanding more about how and why students use libraries. This study contributes to that area of library administration by focusing on nine factors thought to be associated with student use of academic libraries.
Date: August 1988
Creator: Harrell, Charles B.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Factors Related to Mississippi School Library Media Centers in Multitype Cooperation (open access)

Factors Related to Mississippi School Library Media Centers in Multitype Cooperation

The main purpose of this study was to identify the major obstacles to cooperation as perceived by school library media specialists in the state of Mississippi and to determine if members of the Coastal Mississippi Library Cooperative (CMLC) believe that there are fewer obstacles to cooperation than do non-members. The secondary purpose was to evaluate the CMLC to some extent to determine if success was achieved through organization when defined by the variables, planning, governance, funding, communication, administration, and evaluation. The population of the study was all of the librarians (academic, public, school, and special) in the six-county area which comprises the CMLC, and a random sample of public school librarians throughout the remainder of the state. All of the school librarians were sent a questionnaire that requested their responses to statements of barriers to cooperation. All of the librarians in the CMLC region were sent a questionnaire to obtain their perceptions of participation in the CMLC. Pour librarians, members of the CMLC, were Interviewed to obtain information on the organizational factors of the CMLC. Data received from school library media specialists were submitted to various statistical tests. The Chi-Square statistic was used on the demographic portion of the questionnaire, …
Date: May 1988
Creator: Partridge, Margaret
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Effects of Increased Equipment Speed on Online Database Searching Practices (open access)

The Effects of Increased Equipment Speed on Online Database Searching Practices

This study reports changes in online database searching at North Texas State University when equipment speed was increased. Data were from database vendor invoices and price and sale data of online equipment. The hypotheses examined the relationship between the decrease in the cost of online equipment and the change to faster online equipment and the change in the number of databases that changed for online types. The change in equipment was related to changes in the number of offline prints per hour, the average time per search, the average number of descriptors per search, the number of searches per month, and the rank order of database use over the studied period. The increase in the number of databases with billed types was related to the number of online billed types produced. The number of prints was related to the number of billed types. Time spent online was examined for annual seasonal cycles. The major statistical tool was time-series analysis, although other methods were applied.
Date: May 1987
Creator: Masters, Gary E. (Gary Everett)
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Relationships Among a Reading Guidance Program and the Reading Attitudes, Reading Achievement, and Reading Behavior of Fifth Grade Children in a North Louisiana School (open access)

The Relationships Among a Reading Guidance Program and the Reading Attitudes, Reading Achievement, and Reading Behavior of Fifth Grade Children in a North Louisiana School

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not the introduction of a regular librarian-centered reading guidance program as an integral part of the entire school program would improve the reading attitudes and habits of elementary school students and increase the reading achievement scores on a standardized test of elementary school students. In addition, the reading attitudes of students were compared with reading achievement scores to assess any relationship between the two.
Date: August 1986
Creator: Mosley, Mattie Jacks
System: The UNT Digital Library
Relation of Personal Characteristics to Type of Position Among Bibliographic Network Coordinators, Ex-coordinators, and Selected Library Depeartment Heads (open access)

Relation of Personal Characteristics to Type of Position Among Bibliographic Network Coordinators, Ex-coordinators, and Selected Library Depeartment Heads

The objectives of this investigation were two-fold. The first was to determine the personal characteristics of Bibliographic Network Coordinators, both past and present; the second was to compare these identified characteristics with those of persons working in traditional library positions at comparable levels of responsibility.
Date: August 1985
Creator: Upham, Lois Nicholson
System: The UNT Digital Library
Formalization of Collection Development in Selected Medium-Sized Academic Libraries (open access)

Formalization of Collection Development in Selected Medium-Sized Academic Libraries

The degree of formalization of collection development(the dependent variable) in selected medium-sized academic libraries and six independent variables believed to be related to the dependent variable were examined. The formalization of collection development was measured by an index of five dimensions. The six independent variables examined were age of the library, number of graduate degrees offered by the parent institution, estimated years of growth potential in terms of available shelf space, attitude of the library director toward cooperation, number of memberships held by the library in cooperative endeavors, and percentage of increase in the materials budget, from 1972 to 1982. The findings of this study fail to support hypotheses one, three, four, and six. The relationship between the number of memberships in cooperative endeavors (hypothesis five) is weak, but significant. Hypothesis two is not supported when the total group is considered, but it is supported only when publicly-supported libraries are considered. A positive relationship between size of collection and level of collection development formalization was found to be significant, as was the relationship between number of graduate degrees and size of collection.
Date: December 1984
Creator: Harvill, Melba S.
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Comparative Analysis of Reading Habits and Abilities of Students in Selected Elementary Schools in North Louisiana With and Without Centralized Libraries (open access)

A Comparative Analysis of Reading Habits and Abilities of Students in Selected Elementary Schools in North Louisiana With and Without Centralized Libraries

The problem addressed by this investigation is whether the provision of centralized school library services is related to the reading habits and reading abilities of elementary school children. In considering this problem, a survey approach was utilized which entailed the examination of standardized reading achievement test scores, student reading records, and parent, teacher, and student questionnaire responses.
Date: August 1984
Creator: Lowe, Joy L. (Joy Lambert)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Selected Factors Associated With Reading Interests of Seventh- and Eighth-grade Pupils (open access)

Selected Factors Associated With Reading Interests of Seventh- and Eighth-grade Pupils

This study sought to determine if there were differences in the types of reading interests of seventh- and eighth-grade pupils associated with their racial origins, their socioeconomic status, or their school environments. It also sought to consider the strength of reading interest scores as related to other variables and to consider the relationship between these scores and the number of hours spent in reading and the change in amount of reading since the previous school year.
Date: May 1984
Creator: Newman, Nancy Ann
System: The UNT Digital Library
Job Satisfaction Among Academic Librarians (open access)

Job Satisfaction Among Academic Librarians

The purpose of this research was to identify predictors of job satisfaction among academic librarians. Structural models were developed and examined with path analytic procedures to determine the effects of the following variables on librarians' job satisfaction: 1) selected characteristics of individual librarians (education, experience, sex, age, salary, and position), 2) selected characteristics of library organizations (annual budget, sex of director, size of staff, average annual salary of staff, organizational status of librarians, and size of collection), and 3) librarians' perceptions of their job (perceptions of the work, adequacy of pay, promotion opportunities, supervision, associates, and job security).
Date: May 1982
Creator: Glasgow, Bonnie Jean Loyd
System: The UNT Digital Library
Reading Interests and Activity of Older Adults and Their Sense of Life Satisfaction (open access)

Reading Interests and Activity of Older Adults and Their Sense of Life Satisfaction

This study addresses the problem of reading among older adults and the relation of such reading to their sense of life satisfaction. The study also considers the relation between reading interests and activity of older adults and the availability to them of library materials and services.
Date: May 1982
Creator: Grubb, Elizabeth Ann
System: The UNT Digital Library