Medical school libraries and the "new" curriculum

The growing recognition of the need for humanities taught in schools of medicine is affecting acquisitions policies of medical libraries. This paper presents results of a survey conducted in various medical school libraries to evaluate the availability of humanities literature in their collections.     

Reprint requesting: A possible adjunct to citation analysis for judging research: Preliminary questions and findings

Interest in the quality of published research is evident across the range of disciplines including education. Several comprehensive studies either sponsored or published by the American Educational Research Association attest to this fact. In the sciences, citation analysis is attracting interest as a methodology for assessing research. The procedure has both theoretical and practical promise. The present study considers an overlooked source of information, reprint requesting, as a possible adjunct to citation analysis. The study stems from the questionnaire responses of 24 reprint requestors for an article by the authors. Requestor characteristics, motives, and reprint uses are considered. Implications for further research are advanced.     

PERSONALITY INFLUENCES ON CONFIDENCE TEST SCORES*

From the earliest years in the development of confidence testing, several authors have expressed the concern that confidence test scores were influenced, to a measurable degree, by personality variables. Advocates of confidence testing have claimed that the effects of personality variables can be reduced with practice. This study attempts to evaluate the association of personality variables with confidence test scores in light of practice. It was concluded that although significant correlations between personality variables and confidence testing scores could be obtained, these correlations did not hold up with replication.