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The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Insights from interviews*
Iowa OCLC Users Group ConferenceMay 27, 2005
Lynn Silipigni Connaway, OCLCChandra Prabha, OCLC
Brenda Dervin, OSU
*IMLS Grant
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
• Project funded by:– Institute of Museum and Library
Services $480,543 grant to Ohio State University
– Ohio State University (OSU)$209,340 in kind contribution
– Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)$319,412 in kind contribution
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Project Phases
Project durationCalendar years, 2004 and 2005
Four phases:I. Literature reviews and dialogueII. Sense-making surveys: online & phoneIII. Focus group interviewsIV. Structured observations
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Study Populations
• 44 colleges and universities• 100 mile radius from Columbus• 400 informants– 100 each
• Faculty• Graduate students• Undergraduate students• netLibrary users
• Samples, stratified by Carnegie Institutional Class Codes
Input from users
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Focus Group Interviews
– Think of a time when you had a situation where you needed answers or solutions and you did a quick search and made do with it. You knew there were other sources but you decided not to use them. Please include sources such as friends, family, professors, colleagues, etc.
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Focus Group Interviews
– Have there been times when you did not use a library (university/college, public, etc.) and used other sources instead?
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Focus Group Interviews
– Think of an academic situation where you needed answers or solutions and you did a thorough search (you did not take the first answer that you found). Describe the situation.
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Focus Group Interviews
– If you had a magic wand, what would your ideal information systems and services provide? How would you go about using the information systems and services? When? Where? How?
Input from librarians
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Project Dialogues and Librarian Surveys
– Local Advisory Committee
– National Advisory Committee
– OCLC Members Council
– OCLC Board of Trustees
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Project Dialogues
• Library director or representative from each of the 44 academic institutions
• Library director or representative from geographically contingent public libraries
• 79 were invited
• 31 participated
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Online Survey
• OCLC Members Council and Board of Trustees– 126 online surveys distributed– 34 responses = 27% response rate
Common Threads in Librarian Responses
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Information needed for development of user-centered services and collections
– Who are the users?– Where are they getting their information?– Why don’t users think of the library first?
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Biggest challenges of the advance of electronic information systems
– Too much information, too many choices– Not knowing users’ expectations and needs– Off-site users
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Biggest challenges (continued)
– Non-standard search interfaces– User training– Designing systems for users – not librarians– Competing with Google, Amazon, Ask Jeeves…
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Differences between how practitioners and researchers look at users
– Researchers ask why questions– Practitioners are interested in how questions
– Researchers see users in abstract– Practitioners see users in real-time
– Pursue collaborative research• Make practitioners an integral part of
research
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
Differences (continued)
– Overwhelming affirmative response• Theory vs. practice• “Ivory tower” vs. “real world”• Researchers’ general approach vs.
practitioners’ individualized approach• Researchers – “unreality paint”
The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want
• Continue to analyze data
• Write and submit for publication– Literature Reviews– Reports of findings
END NOTES This presentation is one of the outcomes from the
project “Sense-Making the Information Confluence: The Whys and Hows of College and University User Satisficing of Information Needs." Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Ohio State University, and OCLC, Online Computer Library Center, the project is being implemented by Brenda Dervin (Professor of Communication and Joan N. Huber Fellow of Social & Behavioral Science, Ohio State University) as Principal Investigator; and Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC Consulting Research Scientist III) and Chandra Prabha (OCLC Senior Research Scientist), as Co-Investigators. More information can be obtained at: http://imlsosuoclcproject.jcomm.ohio-state.edu/
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