Information literacy of doctoral students in engineering sciences through the view of a librarian

Abstract

At the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering of the University of Ljubljana (UL FGG), Slovenia, a new doctoral study program was launched in the academic year 2009/2010. The information literacy of doctoral students became a mandatory common course. It provides an introduction to scientific research of the built environment and submits lessons (30 hours) and practice of using national (COBISS and SICRIS) and international bibliographic databases Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, as well as citation skills such as EndNote Web (15 hours). The practice course is run by a librarian with a PhD degree. In the period 2013–2015 around 50 doctoral students finished their doctoral study at the UL FGG, 25 of whom were included in the afore mentioned information literacy education (group A); other students are categorized in group B. In our study we will analyze the references used in each of the 50 doctoral dissertations, separately by two groups. The digital repository of UL FGG, i.e. DRUGG, will be used as a database of dissertations. We assume that the number of references used and cited in doctoral dissertations is higher in group A. Furthermore, the impact of education on information literacy will be investigated by conducting a survey among all 50 doctors.