Evidence Summary
Students Use Library Resources but are Unlikely to Consult with
Librarians during the Early Research Process
A Review of:
Thomas, S., Tewell, E.,
& Wilson, G. (2017). Where students start and
what they do when they get stuck: A qualitative inquiry into academic
information-seeking and help-seeking practices. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(3), 224-231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2017.02.016
Reviewed by:
Kimberly Miller
Learning Technologies Librarian
Albert S. Cook Library
Towson University
Towson, Maryland, United States of America
Email: [email protected]
Received: 11
Nov. 2017 Accepted: 6 Dec. 2017
2017 Miller.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0
International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
Abstract
Objective – To investigate where students start their research, what resources they
use, and when they may consult with a librarian.
Design – Ethnographic, semi-structured
interviews.
Setting – A mid-sized, private university
located in the northeastern United States of America.
Subjects – 15 students; 7 undergraduate students
and 8 graduate students.
Methods – Researchers gathered data as part of
a larger ethnographic study conducted at the university. Interview participants were selected from
among respondents to an email survey sent to all university students. Interview
participants were purposefully selected to represent the student population
with regards to their status (undergraduate or graduate), progress through
their programs, and their majors. The semi-structured interviews focused
primarily on how students approached the beginning stages of research and the
types of resources used.
The authors read each interview transcript to identify
possible research questions, then re-read transcripts
to identify codes and potential themes related to the selected research
questions. Finally, they analyzed the transcripts to determine where essential
themes and keywords appeared, while highlighting relevant passages and
finalizing themes.
Main Results – Students were more likely to seek
research help from faculty members and their peers than from librarians. Graduate
student interviewees were more likely to report consulting with librarians than
undergraduate students. Interview themes suggest that students may not consult
with librarians because they do not perceive librarians as having the subject
knowledge or “insider” status (p. 227) of their professors and peers. Few
students articulated an understanding of the expertise librarians could bring
to a research project.
When starting a research project, students were more
likely to report beginning with library databases than they were Google or
other open web sources. While many students also shared that they used multiple
different resources in their initial stages, most also reported that they
ultimately narrowed their search focus to a specific database. Students also
discussed struggling with their database searching.
Conclusion – The authors suggest that future research should focus
on understanding the types of resources that faculty members recommend to their
students, which could inform how librarians approach their work with students.
Additional research related to how faculty members and students perceive
librarians may also clarify the role these groups expect librarians to fill
during the research process. Although results cannot be generalized to all
student populations, the authors call for librarians to further explore
assumptions about how students begin their research and the work academic
librarians do to support students’ natural behaviours
and preferences.
Commentary
Academic reference and instruction librarians have a strong interest in
understanding the decisions students make about conducting research. The
current study adds to a line of research that explores the types of resources,
both human and informational, that students consult during their research
processes. While the study’s findings largely confirm previous research
demonstrating that students are unlikely to consult with librarians, and that students use a range of information sources to begin their
work, the emergent themes shed additional light on how a particular student
population works through early stages of research.
Appraising the study design and evidence using Letts et al.’s (2007)
critical review instrument suggests the study’s strengths lie in using the
qualitative data collection and analysis approach to discover key components of
students’ early research process. Relying on questions and themes that emerge
from the data allowed the authors to explore students’ ordinary experiences.
The team-based approach to identifying questions, codes, and themes increases
the evidence’s reliability. The article provides a relatively clear trail
through the coding and decision making process; however, it is somewhat unclear
whether codes were entirely derived from the initial codebook that was shared
with the researchers or if new codes emerged during the current study’s data
analysis. Relying on data from a larger study also means that the authors had
little control over data collection and design, including whether the selected
student sample led to saturation in their themes. While the article notes
limitations regarding the generalizability of findings, there is no discussion
of whether using data collected in a different context may have an influence on
the results. Given that findings of a small qualitative study may not be
generalizable to other populations, including the interview protocol within the
article could help other librarians confirm the study’s findings with their own
students.
Academic librarians whose responsibilities include student research
support may be most interested in exploring how they can gain “insider” status
with student and faculty researchers. The current study suggests that while
students regularly rely on library resources, students see their peers and
their professors as more useful sources of help because these groups understand
either the assignment or the subject of interest. Librarians must demonstrate a
similar niche within the research process, where students start to assume
librarians also innately understand research or subject-specific needs. This
can be a challenge when, for example, librarians begin research consultations
with an extensive reference interview that students may perceive as extra
questions that other students or faculty members do not need to ask in order to
be helpful. Librarians may consider how to reframe this approach to questioning
as their value-added expertise in an inquiry-based research process.
References
Letts, L.,
Wilkins, S., Law, M., Stewart, D., Bosch, J., & Westmorland, M. (2007)
Critical review form – qualitative studies (version 2.0). In Region of Peel. Retrieved from http://www.peelregion.ca/health/library/eidmtools/qualreview_version2_0.pdf