Documenting the Information Needs of Students and Faculty for ATS Standards Using Student Bibliographic Analysis

Abstract

The question asked in this paper was whether student bibliographies can be used to assess the usage of a library’s collection and thus answer the ATS standard of documenting information needs. The goal was to analyze ten percent of student bibliographies submitted in papers during the past four semesters. This analysis showed that 88% of the citations in this sample could also be found in our two database vendors, the Digital Theological Library (80%) and EBSCO’s eBook Religion Collection (46.4%). Additionally, vendor-supplied statistics did not always parallel student citations.