Experiencing the academic library in the Digital Age: From information seeking and user experience to human information interaction

The Digital Age, marked by the prevalent usage of digital technologies and explosion of digital information, has changed the way we communicate and interact with information, and prompts us to think about how it is influencing and transforming user experience with and within academic libraries. For academic libraries whilst their relationships with users may have shifted so too have their audiences. Internationalisation in higher education (HE) institutions has brought greater student diversity and requirements that should be understood to improve student experience and satisfaction. At the heart of HE, academic libraries serve a significant role in students’ learning and researching and their experience in the academic library constitutes an essential part of the learning experience. Within an interpretive paradigm, this thesis explores how international Chinese students experience the UK academic library in the Digital Age. Mixed methods research was conducted with a largely qualitative stance to explore the complexity of library user experience and to investigate library service delivery in order to enhance the future library user experience design. Library log analysis investigated what students do in the academic library through looking into their information seeking behaviour; cognitive mapping and semi-structured interviews were used to examine how students think and feel about the academic library by probing into their user experience. Demonstrating the complexity and multi-layered characteristics of context, this thesis proposed separating contexts to analyse and understand students’ library experience in distinct contexts. The findings developed an original framework theory of ‘context-perception-sense-making’ to depict a holistic picture of students’ library experience, identifying two vital elements, context and perception, which trigger, shape and alter students’ library experience. This thesis brings together the essential components of information seeking behaviour and user experience into the context of the academic library and defines students’ relationships with and within the library in new ways

Information for inspiration: understanding information-seeking behaviour and library usage of students at the Hong Kong Design Institute

The process of information- and inspiration-seeking behaviour amongst artists and designers often involve direct observation, note-taking, collecting materials and image samples, recognising styles, analysing movements, patterns, textures, as well as experimenting with different materials and techniques. They also rely heavily on having access to a variety of visual resources, both physical and digital, during the process of inspiration-seeking. However, there have been few studies on how art and design students look for and use information in the digital age, especially in the context of the library. This paper reports on an empirical study of the inspiration-seeking process and other information-related behaviour of students at the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI). An online questionnaire was created to ask the HKDI students specific questions: the types of library preferred; students\u27 comfort level with the HKDI Library; student respondents\u27 information needs; and their preferred sources for inspiration. They were also asked which media and venues they looked to for information that was important to their creative process. A total of 327 current students at the HKDI completed the survey. The research findings suggest that information-seeking behaviour of the art and design students was reflective of the fluid and creative nature of the art and design domain. They were regular users of traditional printed resources as well as the physical libraries. They also placed heavy reliance on the Internet and a variety of social networks when it came to inspiration-seeking. Inspiration was found from a very diverse and ‘idiosyncratic’ set of sources; often via accidental discovery. The students\u27 status as emergent practitioners also suggested a strong need for career advice and interactions with peers practicing in the art and design field

Investigating the information-seeking behaviour of academic lawyers: From Ellis's model to design.

Information-seeking is important for lawyers, who have access to many dedicated electronic resources.However there is considerable scope for improving the design of these resources to better support information-seeking. One way of informing design is to use information-seeking models as theoretical lenses to analyse users’ behaviour with existing systems. However many models, including those informed by studying lawyers, analyse information-seeking at a high level of abstraction and are only likely to lead to broad-scoped design insights. We illustrate that one potentially useful (and lowerlevel) model is Ellis’s - by using it as a lens to analyse and make design suggestions based on the information-seeking behaviour of twenty-seven academic lawyers, who were asked to think aloud whilst using electronic legal resources to find information for their work. We identify similar information-seeking behaviours to those originally found by Ellis and his colleagues in scientific domains, along with several that were not identified in previous studies such as ‘updating’ (which we believe is particularly pertinent to legal information-seeking). We also present a refinement of Ellis’s model based on the identification of several levels that the behaviours were found to operate at and the identification of sets of mutually exclusive subtypes of behaviours

Users' trust in information resources in the Web environment: a status report

This study has three aims; to provide an overview of the ways in which trust is either assessed or asserted in relation to the use and provision of resources in the Web environment for research and learning; to assess what solutions might be worth further investigation and whether establishing ways to assert trust in academic information resources could assist the development of information literacy; to help increase understanding of how perceptions of trust influence the behaviour of information users

Responses and Influences: A Model of Online Information Use for Learning

Introduction. This paper explores the complexity of online information use for learning in the culturally diverse ICT-intensive higher education context. It presents a Model of responses and influences in online information use for learning that aims to increase awareness of the complexity of online information use and support information literacy development. Background. Despite increasing integration of information literacy into university curricula there are evident limitations in students’ use of information associated with an information literacy imbalance between well developed IT skills & uncritical approaches, compounded by differences in cultural and linguistic experience. Influences. This model draw insight from models of: information behaviour/seeking (Wilson, Foster, Kuhlthau), information literacy (Bruce), cross-cultural adaptation (Anderson), reflective online use (Hughes, Bruce & Edwards). The model. Incorporates behavioural, cognitive & affective responses with cultural & linguistic influences in an action research framework that represents online information use - envisaged as the experience of engaging with online information for learning - as holistic, dynamic and continuous. Conclusion. The model represents the synergy between information use and learning. It supports the development of inclusive reflective approaches to information literacy that address identified learning challenges related to information literacy imbalance and cultural & linguistic diversity

Meaningful measures for individuals' realities: evidence from the JUBILEE project

Reality differs according to the individual's perception : this is a statement of the obvious. How to deliver appropriate library and information services to fulfil those individuals' requirements is not obvious. Measures of success are needed to form the basis of service planning.These measures must be meaningful for individuals, both users and managers, if the goal of designing and delivering library and information services to meet individuals' realities is to be realised. Contexts are changing for individuals: the fast developing world of electronic information services (EIS) provides individuals with new opportunities and new threats. It is against this background that the JUBILEE project was launched.This paper will use evidence from JUBILEE to present the issues underlying the development of an evaluation toolkit for managers of EIS, which will take into account differences between individuals, between disciplines, and between institutions

Teaching and learning in information retrieval

A literature review of pedagogical methods for teaching and learning information retrieval is presented. From the analysis of the literature a taxonomy was built and it is used to structure the paper. Information Retrieval (IR) is presented from different points of view: technical levels, educational goals, teaching and learning methods, assessment and curricula. The review is organized around two levels of abstraction which form a taxonomy that deals with the different aspects of pedagogy as applied to information retrieval. The first level looks at the technical level of delivering information retrieval concepts, and at the educational goals as articulated by the two main subject domains where IR is delivered: computer science (CS) and library and information science (LIS). The second level focuses on pedagogical issues, such as teaching and learning methods, delivery modes (classroom, online or e-learning), use of IR systems for teaching, assessment and feedback, and curricula design. The survey, and its bibliography, provides an overview of the pedagogical research carried out in the field of IR. It also provides a guide for educators on approaches that can be applied to improving the student learning experiences

A Study of Legal Information Seeking Behaviour to Inform the Design of Electronic Legal Research Tools

Our work is motivated by the desire to support digital library users in ?getting to grips? with electronic resources. More specifically we are motivated by the desire to support users in understanding how to use, and in which situations it is appropriate to use, particular digital library or electronic resources. This work focuses on lawyers as a specific category of user; Callister [5] highlights that lawyers been traditionally regarded as having poor research skills. Electronic research skills are no exception: Howland and Lewis [8] surveyed U.S. law firm librarians to examine the quality and extent of the electronic legal research skills of summer clerks and first-year associates. They found that these graduates were unable to efficiently or effectively research issues that appear routinely in actual legal cases and concluded that they were not efficient or cost-effective users of LexisNexis and Westlaw (the two biggest digital law libraries in terms of case, legislation and journal coverage). This was despite all of the students having received some training on how to use the libraries while in law school. Digital libraries have traditionally been regarded as difficult to use [4] and based on our contextual observations with academic lawyers, digital law libraries such as LexisNexis Professional and Westlaw are no exception. We believe that this difficulty of use contributes to the problems that lawyers face with electronic legal research. Furthermore, we argue that developing better research skills goes hand-inhand with developing an understanding of the electronic environments in which these skills must be practiced. Our current work is focused on gaining a better understanding of legal academics? and professionals? information seeking behaviour when using existing electronic resources. This understanding will then be used to inform the design of user-centred support tools for digital law libraries (and potentially the design of the libraries themselves)

Studying Lawyers’ Information Seeking Behaviour to Inform the Design of Digital Law Libraries

In this paper, we describe our ongoing work which involves examining the information seeking behaviour of legal professionals. This work involves studying the behaviour of both academic and practicing lawyers with the long-term aim of integrating user-centred legal information seeking support into digital law libraries. We report preliminary findings from the initial phase of the study, which comprised a series of semistructured interviews and naturalistic observations of academic law students looking for information that they require for their work. This group of academic lawyers often found it difficult to find the information that they were looking for when using digital law libraries. A potential symptom of this difficulty was that hazy and incorrect knowledge of the digital library system and information sources within the system were rife. This suggests the need for students to understand more about the digital library systems that they use (within-systems knowledge). We also found that although this group of academic lawyers often used several electronic resources in a complementary fashion to conduct legal information seeking, they often chose to rely primarily on one of either the LexisNexis or Westlaw digital law library platforms. Their preference was often based upon vague or sometimes flawed rationale and suggests the need for students to appreciate the situations in which different electronic resources might be useful (between-systems knowledge)

A phenomenographic study of English faculty's conceptions of information literacy

The purpose of this research is to identify UK English academics' conceptions of information literacy and compare those conceptions with current information literacy standards and frameworks