Undergraduates’ Use of Google vs. Library Resources: A Four-Year Cohort Study

Abstract

. © 2016 Carol Perruso, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC. This longitudinal study at a large public university surveyed students of the 2008 freshmen cohort over four years about their use of websites and library resources for their research papers. The three goals of the study were to track changes in reported research behavior over time, to see if students' reported source choices were associated with librarian instruction and/or if they were associated with instructors' source requirements. The study found that, as students matured, they used library resources more frequently. Librarian instruction and faculty source requirements both were associated with increased use of library resources.cademic librarians have been assessing the impact of instruction for years, but few studies have looked at undergraduate research behaviors longitudinally-and none for a cohort over four years. By surveying a convenience sample of a 2008 class of first-time freshmen each semester for four years, we hoped to develop a better understanding of how undergraduates' choices of sources changed over time, and how those changes might be associated with librarian instruction and requirements by instructors on the types of sources they used.Specifically, this study by five librarians 1 explored our frequent observations that many undergraduates quickly retreat to Google-dominant searching after instruction in the use of scholarly databases, sometimes even during the instruction session. The initial research question was, does Google reliance change over time? Using survey data from 386 first-semester freshmen and more than 75 students in each of the next seven semesters, we found that research behavior does change. Literature ReviewIn her 2009 literature review, MacMillan found that few longitudinal studies have examined undergraduate use of web and library resources for academic research, or the development of student information literacy skills over time, and a recent review of the literature by the author found the same to be true since then.2 Most of the longitudinal studies looked at change over relatively short timespans-one to two years. 3 The author could find none that tracked a cohort of students over four years. In addition to reviewing longitudinal studies, this literature review focuses on undergraduates'

Headlines from the discovery files: Key publications on scholarly content discoverability

“…Sometimes called ‘pathways’ (Gardner & Inger, ) and sometimes presented as ‘journeys’ (Faherty, ), information professionals are striving to understand what content channels are being employed by all types of academic users and buyers. The reports highlighted here demonstrate how preferred channels vary depending on training, discipline, or cultural background – whether by looking at Google‐trained US undergraduate students (Perruso, ) or measuring the rates by which US lecturers start their search for new content in their institutional libraries (Wolff et al ., ). These trends differ again when looking at methods for measuring information seeking of Jordanian humanities scholars, who often rely on peer recommendations as a discovery starting point (Al Shboul & Abrizah, ).…”

“…The modes of discovery can also fluctuate based on type of user and their task at hand. For instance, an undergraduate student doing a term paper might start with an open, keyword search in the open web, then narrow down to citable works with the help of the library – routines which are shown to improve with additional research training by the library (Perruso, ). Many reports address distinct types of search activity – such as a student searching for known items discovered via a citation or course syllabi or a medical practitioner exploring related material by the same author via a subject database.…”

Descubrimiento de información científica: ¿todavía misión y visión de la biblioteca académica?

“…Los estudios centrados en estudiantes de doctorado o jóvenes investigadores son relevantes habida cuenta de que se trata de conocer las actitudes de las nuevas generaciones de investigadores, sin duda aquellos con mayores habilidades tecnológicas, pues han crecido con internet proporcionándoles información con facilidad e inmediatez. Los principales resultados obtenidos del primer año de la investigación del proyecto Harbingers sobre descubrimiento de información científica son los siguientes (Nicholas et al 2017 Según van avanzando en su carrera, los estudiantes universitarios tienden a utilizar más los recursos de la biblioteca (Perruso, 2016) El estudio de Pontis et al (2015) basado en entrevistas a 61 investigadores de categorías y antigüedad variable indica que la experiencia determina los canales utilizados en la búsqueda de información. Así, los jóvenes investigadores, poco expertos, mayoritariamente buscan información relevante en la Web.…”

Discovery systems: Are they now the library?

“…And these global search engines are not just deployed to answer every day questions but have become a starting point (and, sometimes, an end point) from much scholarly research. There is much published research to that effect; so, for example, Perruso () reported that 70% of first‐year undergraduates start with a general web search (although that declines as students go through their course), whilst Housewright (2013), in a large‐scale survey in 2012, reported that over 30% of library users will start with a general search engine in preference to a library web site or other tools. Wolff, Rod, and Schonfeld (), in the Ithaka longitudinal series of studies, show web search engines to have been the primary route for search since 2010, and that continues today.…”