Can You Lead a Horse to Water?
Teaching Users About Electronic Resources

Scott Walter

Scott Walter, a member of the editorial board of Research Strategies, is Assistant Dean of Libraries for Information and Instructional Services and Visiting Assistant Professor of Teaching and Leadership at the University of Kansas.

Where do you go when you go online? More importantly, where do your students go? Academic libraries dedicate an increasingly significant percentage of their overall collections budget to the acquisition and networking of electronic resources — journals, books, data sets and databases — and more staff time is dedicated each year to leading users to these high-quality resources through the development of workshops, subject guides, Web portals, online tutorials, and (most recently) Weblogs and RSS feeds. But, how effective are these programs in actually teaching users about the quality and quantity of electronic resources made available through their libraries and leading them to those resources when they need to complete assignments or conduct research?

Existing studies suggest we are fighting an uphill battle in teaching students to consult electronic resources provided through the library prior to diving into the sea of information that is the World Wide Web. According to OCLC (2002), college students are far more likely to begin their research using a search engine than a library website. They are also more likely to consult a friend or classmate for assistance in making effective use of the Web for their  assignments than they are to consult a librarian. Jones (2002) also concludes that students use the open Web more often to complete their assignments than they do the library and that search engines and Web portals are more likely to be the starting point for the research process than library databases or subject guides. Conclusions found in these national studies have been replicated in local studies, including one at Colorado State University (Kaminski, Seel, & Cullen, 2003) that showed first-year students are more than twice as likely to begin their research by using Google (or another search engine) than by using a library database or article index, and another at Washington State University (Walter, in press) that showed students of color are twice as likely to ask a friend for assistance with their research than to ask a librarian. Lippincott (2005) concludes that these results suggest significant “disconnects” between academic libraries and the students to whom they make available such rich electronic resources, but research also suggests that librarians are finding many ways to address the information habits of the Net Generation and to start the work of making connections between them and their library resources.

For example, we know both from the studies cited above and from first-hand accounts (e.g. Windham, 2005) that students recognize the limitations of the Web as an information source. At the same time, studies such as Bartsch and Tyldacka (2003) and Perrett (2004) show that even students experienced with the research process and with library resources may have inaccurate perceptions both of the quality of resources available online and of their own abilities to locate and use those resources. Studies by Beile and Boote (2002) and by Monoi, O’Hanlon and Diaz (2005) demonstrate how direct instruction in database searching skills and Internet searching skills can both improve student performance in information retrieval and evaluation and enhance students’ confidence in their ability to locate high-quality information resources through the library and the Web. The emergence of openly available search engines focused on locating scholarly material (e.g. Google Scholar) and the opportunity to link full-text electronic resources from search engines to library databases through link-resolving technology provide new opportunities for making connections between student preferences for search engines as a starting point for research and library commitments to leading students to high-quality electronic resources.

Libraries are making headway in meeting students “where they live” on the Web, for example, through campus Web portals and online course management systems. While library Web portals were never widely adopted by college students as a starting point for research (Zhou, 2003), there is reason to believe that “library channels” in broadly-defined campus Web portals (which students visit for access to vital information such as financial aid) may hold more promise. Stoffel and Cunningham (2005) surveyed information technology staff at campuses participating in the uPortal software development project and found that the majority of respondents provided access to library content such as patron records, electronic reserves and reference services, and links to electronic journals and other digital content through the campus portal. While this study was preliminary, it suggests that many campuses see library resources and services as worthy of representation at a high level in campus portal projects.

This is likewise the case in terms of opportunities to lead students to electronic resources through online course environments such as Blackboard and WebCT. National studies of student behavior such as OCLC (2002) suggest that course websites are second only to search engines as starting points for student research. Many libraries were slow to provide direct links to resources and services through course sites (Cohen, 2002), but many others did provide those links thanks to the work of proactive librarians (Shank & DeWald, 2003).

Costello, Lenholt and Stryker (2004) studied student satisfaction with information literacy instruction supplemented by Web resources and documentation made available through their course websites and found that students reported high levels of satisfaction with both the face-to-face instruction and with the links provided to high-quality electronic resources. Reeb and Gibbons (2004) also found online course environments to be helpful in promoting use of Web-based subject guides. Even well-designed subject guides made available as part of course pages are not always the answer, though, as Ursin, Lindsay and Johnson (2004) discovered when they found little correlation between the bibliographies prepared by first-year students as part of their final projects for a Freshman Seminar program with a strong research focus and the sources provided to those students by librarians during course-related instruction. While we may not yet know how best to lead students to high-quality electronic resources through course websites, we do know that the online course environment is rich with opportunities for analysis of student behavior, e.g. by allowing for content analysis of discussion thread postings related to the research process or by allowing for quantitative analysis of the use of librarian-selected links and resources by students through course sites.

Opportunities for studies of this sort will only grow as libraries become increasingly involved in the direct management of online course environments on campus.

Public services such as reference and instruction (along with creative liaison with classroom faculty) are among the most powerful tools through which librarians can help to lead students to the wide variety of electronic resources now made available through library websites and other digital repositories. As even this brief tour through recent literature should suggest, there are ample opportunities for research in this field. Much of this research can be guided by the Association of College & Research Libraries’ “Research Agenda for Library Instruction and Information Literacy” (2005), which, like many of the studies cited above, identifies topics such as the information-seeking behaviors of students, effective methods of Web-based instruction, and relationships between information literacy instruction and broader campus initiatives (e.g. online course environments, campus portal projects), as critical subjects of study. Research Strategies has been one of the leading avenues for discussions of research in this field for more than 20 years and we look forward to continuing to help bring research and practice together for teaching librarians.

About Research Strategies

Research Strategies is committed to providing the library profession with the latest thinking and research on instructional services and the educational mission of the library. This journal welcomes submissions on teaching methods, theories of learning, research behavior of library users, conceptual frameworks for teaching, the philosophy of instructional services and other topics related to the field. www.elsevier.com/locate/resstr

Library Connect Practical Assistance Pamphlet

"How Libraries Are Training Users on E-resources: Best Practices" offers information, insights and tips valuable for librarians helping researchers get the best from the digital world.

Librarians around the world — including Rachel Daniels in the UK, Gabriela Sonntag in the US, Elaine Fairey in Canada and Telma de Carvalho in Brazil — provide tips on subjects such as how to capitalize on the “wow” factor while training users, how to integrate an information literacy program into campus-wide initiatives, and how to create an online tutorial in

a local language. www.elsevier.com/libraryconnect

References

Bartsch, R. A., & Tyldacka, B. L. (2003). Student perceptions (and the reality) of percentage of journal articles found through full-text databases. Research Strategies,19 (2),128-134.

Beile, P. M., & Boote, D. N. (2002). Library instruction and graduate professional development: Exploring the effect of learning environments on self-efficacy and learning outcomes. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 48 (4), 364-367.

Cohen, D. (2002). Course-management software: Where’s the library? EDUCAUSE Review, 37 (3). Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0239.pdf

Costello, B., Lenholt, R., & Stryker, J. (2004). Using Blackboard in library instruction: Addressing the learning styles of Generations X and Y. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30 (6), 452-460.

Jones, S. (2002). The Internet goes to college: How students are living in the future with today’s technology. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Report.pdf

Kaminski, K., Seel, P., & Cullen, K. (2003). Technology literate students? Results from a survey. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 26 (3). Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0336.pdf

Lippincott, J. K. (2005). Net generation students and libraries. In D. G. Oblinger & J. L. Oblinger (eds.), Educating the Net generation. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub7101m.pdf

Monoi, S., O’Hanlon, N., & Diaz, K. R. (2005). Online searching skills: Development of an inventory to assess self-efficacy. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31 (2), 98-105.

OCLC. (2002). OCLC white paper on the information habits of college students. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from www5.oclc.org/downloads/community/informationhabits.pdf

Perrett, V. (2004). Graduate information literacy skills: The 2003 ANU skills audit. Australian Library Journal, 53 (2), 161-171.

Reeb, B., & Gibbons, S. (2004). Students, librarians, and subject guides: Improving a poor rate of return. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 4 (1), 123-130.

Shank, J., & DeWald, N. H. (2003). Establishing our presence in courseware: Adding library services to virtual classrooms. Information Technology & Libraries, 22 (1), 38-43.

Stoffel, B., & Cunningham, J. (2005). Library participation in campus Web portals: An initial survey. Reference Services Review, 33 (2), 144-160.

Ursin, L., Lindsay, E. B., & Johnson, C. M. (2004). Assessing library instruction in the freshman seminar: A citation analysis study. Reference Services Review, 32 (3), 284-292.

Walter, S. (in press). Moving beyond collections: Academic library outreach to multicultural student centers. Reference Services Review, 33 (4).

Windham, C. (2005). The student’s perspective. In D. G. Oblinger & J. L. Oblinger (eds.), Educating the Net generation. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub7101e.pdf

Zhou, J. (2003). A history of Web portals and their development in libraries. Information Technology & Libraries, 22 (3), 119-128.