Seiden, Peggy, Kris Szymborski and Barbara Norelli. Undergraduate students in the digital library:

Information seeking behavior in an heterogeneous environment. Choosing Our Futures,

ACRL 1997 Annual Conference Papers.

http://www.ala.org/ala/acrlbucket/nashville1997pap/seidenszymborski.cfm

(accessed January 27, 2008).

Summary:

The paper presents the study of information seeking among sixty undergraduates at Skidmore College. The study was designed to 1) assess students’ information seeking behavior in general; 2) elicit information about the search process; and 3) discern how students had acquired their knowledge of online searching and their level of expertise with online searching, computer applications and libraries. The results indicate that most undergraduates have relatively poor understanding of the information environment and that the “digital library” exaggerates and magnify these problems.

Discussion:

In the current future where information is practically in all sorts of formats and medium and practically everyone has access to these sorts of formats and medium, it is but expected to think that everyone practically knows how to use and access this information. Currently, information environments will continue to be a combination of both digital and that from the traditional library sources.

I selected the article “Undergraduate students in the digital library: information seeking in a heterogeneous environment” because of my thinking that the digital age we live on, the young people in these century are growing up digital. “Growing up digital” was defined by Eliza Dresang in her article “The information-seeking behavior of youth in the digital environment,” as those who were born after 1977 and who have experienced a life in which computers are commonplace. With this same Internet-generation youth in mind, the word “cyberkids” was coined to describe young people whose lives are inextricably bound up with an internet-saturated setting. With this premise I would like to know how these kids of today behave when searching with the use of the technology of computers.

The subject of the study (39 undergraduate students) had experience in using the Web, 60% of them use it for research. Ellis’ behavioral model, as simplified by Chun, Detlor and Turnbill in their “Information seeking on the web: an integrated model of browsing and searching,” states: an individual could begin surfing the Web from one of a few favorite starting pages or sites (starting); follow hypertextual links to related information resources (chaining); scan the Web pages of the sources selected (browsing); bookmark useful sources for future reference and visits (differentiating); subscribe to e-mail based services that alert the user of new information or development (monitoring); and search a particular source or site on that site on a particular topic (extracting). This model of information seeking was also similar with what the students of the study used. Majority of the students possess a high level of comfort with computers and so do not see the technology as a barrier to research. The students indicate a strong preference for computer based resources in as much as it enhance efficiency – the-one-stop shopping. Expediency and convenience in developing their information seeking strategy were the driving force to use the Web. Electronic sources were considered to be the best option for obtaining fast information. And that, physical library presented more barriers to their research process than the digital library. The digital library environment does appear to change help seeking patterns, but students frequently start and end their research at the computer.

The developing digital library demands users have a sophisticated model of the information environment in order to be able to appropriately utilize the wide variety of resources available and to move among search which might have not only different interfaces, but distinctly different structures and content. The findings show that students cannot gain the knowledge through experience alone. It must be taught. Students and researchers must work with librarians on developing assignments which will provide students with a deeper understanding of the information environment rather than simply providing knowledge of how to use specific tools.

Undergraduate students and everyone needs to be taught on how to use the resources in the Web and in the library. Librarians still need to be ever present in teaching and guiding the users in the use of the resources.

References:

Chun, Wei Choo, Brian Detior and Don Turnbull (2000). Information seeking on the Web: an integrated model of browsing and searching. First Monday 5, no. 2 February). http://firstmonday.org/issues/issues5_2/choo/index.html (accessed February 8, 2008).

Dresang, Eliza T. 2005 The Information-seeking behavior of youth in the Digital Environment. The Free Library (September 22). http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The_information- seeking_behavior_of_youth_in_the _digital_environment.-a0142058650 (accessed February 04, 2008)