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