Student searching behavior and the web: use of academic resources and Google

Library Trends, Spring, 2005 by Jillian R. Griffiths, Peter Brophy

Student Perceptions of Quality One of the main aims of the IE is to provide a managed quality resource for staff and students in higher and further education. During discussions with various stakeholders involved with the development of the IE, it became clear that common definitions of what is meant by quality electronic resources could not be assumed. Therefore, participants were asked during testing to indicate what quality meant to them in terms of information available via electronic services (they were not asked to relate their responses to any one particular service). Four criteria were presented to them with which they could either agree or disagree. Participants were also asked to add any additional criteria that were not listed but were important to them. Table 1 presents their responses.

Additional criteria listed by students included (1) links to related areas; (2) understanding language used; (3) resources relevant; (4) speed of response; (5) resources useful; (6) resources valuable; (7) clear information; (8) source; (9) accessible; (10) timeliness; (11) presentation; and (12) references.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

These results raise a number of important and interesting issues:

* Students prefer to locate information or resources via a search engine above all other options, and Google is the search engine of choice.

* Students' use of academic resources is low.

* Students find it difficult to locate information and resources.

* Students may trade quality of results for effort and time spent searching.

* Students' use of SEs now influences their perception and expectations of other electronic resources.

Students either have little awareness of alternative ways of finding information to the search engine route or have tried other methods and still prefer to use Google--a situation we now refer to as the "Googling phenomenon." Beyond this, even when students are able to locate information it is not always easy (even when using Google), and with a third of participants failing to find information, user awareness, training, and education need to be improved. While 70 percent of participants felt that they were successful in locating a Web site that provided the required information, only half of these thought that it was easy to locate information. Only the information management students frequently used library resources first to locate information, though some also used search engines either as a first resort or as a backup. And while there were some indications that other students knew about and used library resources, their use was much less common.

Students prefer particular favorite search engines, though the reasons they give for their preferences are common across all search engines. Some users indicated that, if their first search strategy did not work, they had a string of similar resources to use as a backup: "Lycos, then Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista," "Google, Alta Vista, Excite, Northern Light," or "Goto.com, Yahoo, Lycos" were typical comments. Others tried a search engine first, and if this failed they turned to a different kind of search tool: "Google then Ingenta," "Google, Biology section of library home page, RDN, Yahoo," for example.