[WEB4LIB] Student use of library web services

[Ian Winship]

Tony Barry wrote:

> Has anybody see anything written on this or have comments?

The JUSTEIS project (JISC Usage Surveys: Trends in Electronic Information
Services) at UC Aberystwyth, Wales is looking at the use of electronic
resources in UK HE.
The recent interim report
(http://www.dil.aber.ac.uk/dils/Research/JUSTEIS/cyc1rep0.htm) has some
relevant conclusions - extracts below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Winship
Learning Resources, University of Northumbria at Newcastle  
City Campus Library, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK

                    ----------------       
e-mail: ian.winship at unn.ac.uk                
phone:  0191 227 4150      fax: 0191 227 4563 
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[BIDS: a long established provider of databases to UK HE; EIS=Electronic
information services; subject gateways refers particularly to those like
ADAM (http://www.adam.ac.uk); Biz/ed (http://www.bized.ac.uk), EEVL
(http://www.eevl.ac.uk), OMNI (http://www.omni.ac.uk), SOSIG
(http://www.sosig.ac.uk) that are funded by UK HE]

>From 1.3 Findings: 

A major conclusion is the widespread use of e-mail among all user groups. A
particular issue raised regularly was the popularity of Web-based systems
for personal e-mail which are more flexible and have better availability
than HEI systems. The effect of the Internet on information seeking by staff
and students is hugely significant; search engines and
known sites are the first resort for most academic queries, as well as for
many personal domestic queries. There was a wide range of engines used and
indications of haphazard searching. The OPAC is used consistently across the
student body and by academic staff. 

Another major conclusion is that subject gateways are notable only for their
lack of mention among students and academic staff, although there is some
use among LIS staff. With the exception of LIS staff and academic and
research staff, the use of e-journals, Web databases, and BIDS is also low
(except in certain discipline clusters). Even for staff the
actual incidence is lower than might be expected. 

For all EIS, there is little evidence of coherent search strategies used by
students. While use of search engines, and e-mail is universally high, there
seem some distinct differences among the various disciplines for other EIS
which is worthy of further investigation. 


8.4.2 Implications for LIS

The low use of LIS staff and courses that direct students to appropriate EIS
needs to be addressed. (Section 6.11.6) 

The marketing of Gateways and other specialised EIS is deficient. Whilst
this is not something that can be handled by individual HE information
services alone, they do share a responsibility for making potential users
adequately aware of the services they are providing. (Section 6.11.2)

Access to resources that cannot easily be located elsewhere, and the ease of
manipulating the information (textual and image) into project and assignment
materials, are issues that should continue to be a focus for training.
(Section 6.11.5)

The default search for information is via a search engine, usually the first
that comes up. LIS pages and routes are sometimes ignored completely. This
is probably a reflection also of many students' use of home computers and
their own Internet service providers and is a matter deserving
consideration.