CiL2008: What Do Users Really Do in their Native Habitat? pt 1

This session consisted of two presentations on separate studies done by the University of Guelph and ProQuest. Both of them wanted to find out how their users researched in order to better serve them. (ProQuest in the next blog post)

Millennial Mythology

The University of Guelph went first, and started by pointing out that the survey applied to their user base only and might or might not apply to other institutions. They also went to great lengths to disguise the library origin of the survey, in order to keep respondents from choosing the answers they thought they wanted to hear, and had the questions looked over and tweaked by a non-library statistician-type person in order to eliminate bias and make sure the replies would answer the actual questions they wanted to ask.

Results include:

-- 9% of students use PDAs. 91% did not.
-- 69% own a cellphone, 79% of those used it for text messaging, while only 17% of cellphone owners used them to browse the Internet
-- 93% used Internet chat programs and about half used them for academic purposes
-- Overall, the students prefer to use email to communicate with group project members
-- Most of them not interested in using online social networks (OSN) to share work with classmates. They would share only with friends - the overall attitude was "why would I share my work with students who hadn't done the work?"
-- Only 4.1% participated in online virtual environments like Second Life

When students did online research, the order in which they used resources was:

1. the UG library or library website
2. Google
3. Journals
4. Catalog
5. Google Scholar
6. Specific journal indices

Library-related answers accounted for more than 80% of the responses.

Students in focus groups conducted to follow up on the survey said they used library sites as often as, and in conjunction with, Google. They *also* said, however, that the library site was the most complicated and frustrating option.

Discussion points they brought up:

--Technology and gadgets were not being used the way we'd expect. Cellphones were used for talking and texting, mostly.

-- Students were reluctant to mix personal and academic computing (i.e. reluctant to have the library invade Facebook and Myspace). Younger students were less reluctant, however, and they expect that trend to continue in the future.

--Is it the best use of resources to develop online presences like Facebook and Myspace right now? They'll continue to monitor the trend.

--Their priority is to improve what they have on offer now: create more user-friendly websites and more efficient search tools.

-- What needs to be done is to determine what the students need and eek solutions to meet those needs.

-- Development needs to originate with the students.