RESEARCH LITERATURE AND ITS PERCEIVED RELEVANCE TO UNIVERSITY LIBRARIANS.

Two factors identified as contributing to the lack of communication between researchers and practitioners, terminology and relevance, are the focus of this paper. A questionnaire distributed to senior staff in academic libraries asked participants to assess abstracts from articles in top ranked LIS journals. Results indicated a relatively high level of understanding of the articles, indicating that terminology was not a problem, and two thirds of the articles were rated as relevant to the profession. This result suggests that there is less of a gap in understanding between researchers and professionals than has been perceived. Involvement of practitioners in joint projects may be more feasible than was previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]