THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION

LIS 397.1 (known as INF 397C, beginning with the Fall Semester 2003)
INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
R. E. Wyllys

Guide to Course Materials for LIS 397.1

This page provides a guide to some of the Webpages used to support the I-School course, Introduction to Research in Library and Information Science, as I taught it prior to retiring from UT-Austin.

The currently available resources are:

A Cautionary Note: How Difficulties Can Arise from Combining Statistics

Course Description for LIS 397.1 (for a typical semester)

Course Schedule (for a typical semester)

Evaluating Reports of Research

Guidelines for Research Proposals

Lecture Notes** for LIS 397.1
    Meeting 1: Basic Research Concepts
    Meetings 2, 5, 8, and 11: Survey Techniques
    Meeting 3: Basic Concepts in Descriptive and Inferential Statistics
    Meetings 4 and 6: The Gaussian Distribution
    Meeting 7: Statistical Hypotheses
    Meeting 9: Student's t-Test and ANOVA
    Meetings 10 and 12: Working with Two Variables: Correlation, Regression, and Chi-Square
    Meeting 13: Choosing an Appropriate Statistical Test Procedure
    Meeting 14: Some Other Research Techniques Relevant to Library and Information Science

Mathematical Notes*** for LIS 397.1
    ANOVA: Analysis of Variance
    Calculation Exercises
    The Chi-Square Tests and Their Uses
    Confidence Intervals for the Mean of a Population
    Correlation and Analogous Measures
    Definitional vs. Calculational Forms of the Standard Deviation and Variance Formulas
    Mid-Term Exam, In-Class Part: Sample 1
    Mid-Term Exam, Take-Home Part: Sample 1
    Mid-Term Exam, In-Class Part: Sample 2
    Mid-Term Exam, Take-Home Part: Sample 2
    Public Opinion Polling and Sample-Size Determination
    Quartiles and Microsoft Excel
    Questions about Population Means and Proportions
    Statistical Hypotheses
    The t-Deviation and z-Deviation Formulas
    Using Regression to Estimate and Predict
    Using the Gaussian (Normal) Distribution for Approximations
    Which Standardized Statistical Procedure Should I Use?

Notes on Using Microsoft Excel for Statistical Analysis

References for LIS 397.1

Survey Reports, Spring 1999***
    Future of the Profession
    GSLIS Information Technology Lab Usage
    GSLIS Multimedia Lab Use
    Jester Center Freshman Year Experience Floor
    Students Under Pressure: An Analysis of the Extracurricular Factors Impacting GSLIS Students

Survey Reports, Summer 1999***
    Bun-Heads or Bad Girls: Self-Perception and Stereotypes Among Library Science Students
    A Comparison of the Demographics of UT GSLIS Students with the 1989 American Library Association Survey
    Frequency and Demographics of Depression: A Study of the UT-Austin GSLIS Student Population
    Students' Opinions of Course LIS 386.1, Introduction to Library and Information Studies
    Trifocals or Tattoos: A Survey of Attitudes regarding Body Art among GSLIS Students

A Web-Based Calculator for the Chi-Squared Test of Association (from the Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University)

Recently I received a request for a reprint of an article of mine that was published in 1978, Teaching Descriptive and Inferential Statistics in Library Schools.*** Lacking reprints, I put the article into Portable Document Format in order to provide it to the requester. Re-reading the article, I felt that it, although outdated as to specific computer programs, still presented a solid case for why LIS professionals should know something of both descriptive and inferential statistics. Hence, I have posted it to the Web for easy access for students in LIS 397.1.

Indeed, one of the major themes of the research course as I taught it was the importance of statistics as a set of tools for the social sciences, one of which is certainly library and information science, dealing as it does with people, the intellectual products of people, and the interactions between people and those intellectual products. Retirement has given me an opportunity to pursue my long held interest in the history of statistics, and in doing so I have gained an increased appreciation of the contributions to that history by a Belgian polymath, Lambert-Adolphe-Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874), who is surprisingly under-appreciated in Anglophone countries. Adolphe Quetelet, as he is generally known, had an impressively wide range of interests as a scientist, teacher, and administrator. He wrote poetry, earned a doctorate in mathematics, helped to found and later directed the Brussels [astronomical] Observatory, tutored Prince Albert (who became the husband of Queen Victoria) in mathematics, and played an important role in establishing a coordinated system of meteorological observations in Europe. But his major interest was the study of human populations using statistics, and he can justly be called a father of sociology, of demography, and of applied statistics. In admiration, I have set up a Webpage devoted to Resources on Adolphe Quetelet.

*The Mid-Term Exam data are in the form of Microsoft Excel files.

**The Lecture Notes are in the form of Microsoft PowerPoint files.

***The files for the Mathematical Notes, Survey Reports, and the 1978 article are Portable Document Format (".pdf") files.  To read them, you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader as a plug-in for your browser.  If you do not already have Acrobat Reader associated with your browser, you can download a free copy from the Adobe Acrobat Reader Webpage.

The Mathematical Notes files should be printed on an inkjet or laser printer, if possible; but if you wish to print any of them on a dot-matrix printer, you should use the highest-quality print mode available.

Go to Wyllys Webpage

Last revised 2004 May 11