Title: Lead, Science and Technology Team and Mercer Library, University Libraries
Email: khoffma@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-3844
Website: https://library.gmu.edu/subject-librarians
Groups: Faculty
Research Focus
I am responsible for the planning, development, and implementation of innovative library services in the areas of reference, research, and instruction that support faculty and students within the fields of physical and life sciences and engineering/technology. I lead my team to integrate library faculty into STEM research and educational programs while fostering an environment that promotes development of new approaches to traditional library services. I am the library liaison for Environmental Science (ESP) and Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences (AOES) across university campuses, including instruction, reference and resource acquisition. My research focus on library services is to multidisciplinary institutes and research centers, including bibliometric analysis, collaboration and outreach.
Current Projects
■ Bibliometric methods, using citations as data, are an alternate way to learn from the literature of science and technology. These statistical methods are used, with visualization tools, to determine the relationship between authors and papers, scientific subjects reflected in publishing, and word or frequency occurrence. Bibliometrics are used by libraries to get a broad view of the growth, structure, connections and productivity of a discipline reflected in literature. This research studies trends and multidisciplinary connections across university researchers and campuses. With a strategic initiative from George Mason University (GMU) to become excellent in multidisciplinary research, Mason Libraries support multidisciplinary research activities. This study completes an analysis on bibliometric and funding across five centers at the GMU Science and Technology campus (SciTech) to understand research activities and interactions.
Select Publications
■ Hoffman, K., et.al. (2018). Scholarly connections: Leveraging citation data to highlight faculty research trends. Retrieved from http://mars.gmu.edu/ handle/1920/11111.
■ Mahapasuthanon, P., & Hoffman, K. (2019). Beyond bibliometrics: Understanding library services in multidisciplinary research. Retrieved from http://mars. gmu.edu/handle/1920/11419.