graduate students' perceptions of federated searching - sarah baker, alisa gonzalez

Graduate Students’ Perceptions of Federated Searching

Sarah Baker, Education Librarian

New Mexico State University

Alisa C. Gonzalez, Reference Coordinator

New Mexico State University

One Search

Text

Previous Research

Implementation • (Gerrity, Lyman & Tallent,2002) (Ellis, Hartnett & Waldman, 2008)

Usability • (Lampert & Dabbour, 2007) (Belliston, Howland & Roberts, 2007)

(Tallent, 2004)

Student Information Seeking Behavior • (Kuhlthau, 1991) (Sadler & Given, 2007)

• (Barrett, 2005) (George, Bright, Hurlbert, et al., 2006)

“Student Feedback on Federated Search Use, Satisfaction, and Web Presence

Qualitative Findings of Focus Groups” (Williams, Bonnell, & Stoffel, 2009)

Study focused on:

• Use

• Satisfaction

• Website Integration (p.134)

• Graduate and Undergraduate Students

Similarities in Our Findings

• Majority of students were satisfied

• Preferred Advanced Search

• Federated Search was used in conjunction with other resources

• Disliked

• “logic of results”

• lack of instruction

Differences in Our Study

• We only interviewed graduate students with significant experience using One Search.

• We asked students about their experience with library instruction.

• Students demonstrated how they had answered a previous research question.

• Students described their research process, in general.

Methodology

• Participants completed a brief online survey

• Participants selected were current graduate students with experience using One Search

• 13 individual semi-formal interviews.

• Asked ten questions with follow up questions.

• Preliminary findings gathered by note analysis

Demographic Information New Mexico State University

• 51 master’s degree programs

• 24 doctoral programs in the colleges of Engineering,!Business Administration and Economics, Education, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, Arts and Sciences and Health and Social Services

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Demographic Information

Demographic InformationMaster’s vs. Doctorate

• 11 master’s students

• 2 doctoral students

Male vs. Female

• 4 male

• 9 female

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Survey Questions• What level are you at in your graduate studies?

• What is your discipline?

• How many instruction sessions have you attended in your undergraduate and graduate studies?

• I rate my internet research skills as…

• I rate my library research skills as…

• How often have you used One Search?

• How did you find out about One Search?

• How important is the library to your research?

Interview Questions

Preliminary Findings

How do you conduct research?

What resources do you consult?

• Brainstorm with Google or Wikipedia then use One Search or separate library databases to find articles.

• Browse One Search for abstracts then use the Internet if their search fails.

• Will use specific databases if they know the subject well, otherwise One Search or Google Scholar.

How do you conduct research?

What resources do you consult?

Consult with:

• Professors

• Advisors

• Other students

What methods do you use to find

academic/scholarly information?

• Internet, One Search and books to find article citations

• Look up citations in traditional library resources (subject specific databases, catalogs)

• Faculty, advisors and other students

What methods do you use to find

academic/scholarly information?

PhD students:

• Perform more focused research

• Search within a particular journal

• Develop research strategy with cohort

What do you expect to find when

searching One Search?

• Abstracts

• Full text journal articles

• Students look for books but find mostly articles.

• Most students prefer searching the library catalog separately for books.

Describe a research question that you

tried to answer using One Search?

• Most students use the Advanced Search.

• Limit search by selecting databases by subject

• Refine search by topic clusters, date, source

• Scan abstracts to see if results were relevant, if not, will change search

• Some students were apprehensive about the quality of their search skills.

• Confusion over selecting keyword, subject or title fields

What are the strengths?

• Easy to find lots of information

• Searching reliable sources

• Searchable abstracts

• Sort by year

• View results by journal and database

• Convenient

• User friendly

• Good starting point for research

What are the weaknesses/limitations?

• Not intuitive

• Slow in searching/processing

• Problems accessing full text

• Shows too many results, overwhelming

• Outdated interface design

• Doesn’t search phrases well

• Defaults to title search

• “Wish I had faith in how it is searching”

Are you satisfied with the results?

• Yes

• For the most part

• Not completely, not bad

• Sometimes, not all of the time

• No

• It has great potential

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How did students rate One Search?

Average rating = 7.7

What kinds of information can be

effectively found using One Search?

• Abstracts

• Books

• Background information

• Scholarly journal articles/literature reviews

• Very specific information when using narrow search terms

Individual Databases vs. One Search

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The Next Steps...

• Change interface design

• Provide search tips on One Search interface

• Market One Search

• Incorporate in library instruction

• Publish findings

ReferencesBarrett, A. (2005) The information seeking habits of graduate student researchers in the humanities. Journal of Academic

Librarianship, 31(4), 324-331

Belliston, C. J., Howland, J. L., & Roberts, B. C. (2007). Undergraduate use of federated searching: A survey of preferences and perceptions of value-added functionality. College & Research Libraries, 68(6), 472-486.

Ellis, L. A., Hartnett, J., & Waldman, M. (2008). Building Bearcat. Library Journal, 133, 6-8.

George, C., Bright, A., Hurlbert, T., Linke, E. C., St. Clair, G., & Stein, J. (2006). Scholarly use of information: graduate students' information seeking behaviour. Information Research, 11(4), 14-14.

Gerrity, B., Lyman, T., & Tallent, E. (2002). Blurring services and resources: Boston College's implementation of MetaLib and SFX, Reference Services Review, 30, 229-241.

Kuhlthau, C. C. (1991). Inside the search process: Information seeking from the user's perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 361-371.

Lampert, L. D., & Dabbour, K. S. (2007). Librarian perspectives on teaching metasearch and federated search technologies. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 12(3/4), 253-278.

Sadler, E., & Given, L. M. (2007). Affordance theory: a framework for graduate students' information behavior. Journal of Documentation, 63(1), 115-141.

Tallent, E. (2004). Metasearching in Boston College libraries — a case study of user reactions. New Library World, 105(1/2), 69-75.

Williams, S. C., Bonnell, A., & Stoffel, B. (2009). Student Feedback on Federated Search Use, Satisfaction, and Web Presence: Qualitative Findings of Focus Groups. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 49(2), 131-139.

Questions?

Contact us!

Alisa C. Gonzalez acgonzal@lib.nmsu.edu

Sarah Baker sbbaker@lib.nmsu.edu