Skip to content


“Observing Students in their Native Habitat,”

John Law from ProQuest presented some of the results of their recent study on the research needs of college students at Online in London this month:
For College Students Time Management is Biggest Research Issue, says ProQuest Study
Quality content has the edge, but convenience can trump all

Some snippets:
“Student researchers have an overwhelming preference for online resources that make the best use of their research time.”
“Students prefer the content available in library databases for its ability to deliver more relevant information in a single search. However, if discovery and access to library databases is more cumbersome than they expect, they will abandon library resources for the more familiar terrain of Google and Wikipedia.”
“Students respond well to library instruction on electronic resources that are presented to them in a class by a research librarian. Especially important in this regard is raising awareness that a variety of library databases exist and where to find them.”
“Students place an unusually strong importance on resource recommendations they receive from their professors. In fact, students tend to generalize these recommendations across all types of research assignments and as a result, use databases that may not be appropriate for the task at hand.”
“Students respond to brand names and possess a relatively high level of brand awareness. However, knowledge didn’t extend much beyond name and students were rarely able to distinguish between resources at the database level.”
“Students choose Google and Wikipedia as handy look-up tools for quick, simple background information, when they need specific fact, and when they need an unfamiliar term defined. However, students indicated they did not consider the Google results or information gleaned from Wikipedia to be authoritative.”
The study is called “Observing Students in their Native Habitat.” The full results will apparently be published by VALA in 2008.
There are some real insights here for marketing library skills training programs.
Stephen

0 Shares

Posted on: December 11, 2007, 6:58 pm Category: Uncategorized

0 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.