Understanding Users' Information Seeking Behavior

1. The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want Insights from interviews* Iowa OCLC Users Group Conference May 27, 2005 Lynn Silipigni Connaway, OCLC Chandra Prabha, OCLC Brenda Dervin, OSU *IMLS Grant

2. 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

3. The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want Project Phases Project duration Calendar years, 2004 and 2005 Four phases: • Literature reviews and dialogue • Sense-making surveys: online & phone • Focus group interviews • Structured observations

4. 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

5. Input from users

6. 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.

7. 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? 

8. 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.

9. 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?

10. Input from librarians

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Common Threads in Librarian Responses

15. 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?

16. 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

17. 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…

18. 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

19. 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”

20. The Whys & Hows of Students & Faculty Finding What They Want • Continue to analyze data • Write and submit for publication • Literature Reviews • Reports of findings

21. 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/