Laurie Bridges

Who Is Not Using the Library? A Comparison of Undergraduate Academic Disciplines and Library Use

This study examines the differences in undergraduate library use by academic discipline at Oregon State University (OSU). In the winter of 2006, an online questionnaire about physical and virtual library use was distributed to 3,227 OSU undergraduates; 949 responses were received. Chi-square tests were used to distinguish differences between user groups. The results indicate that students in the Agricultural Sciences College use the physical library less than students in the Liberal Arts College, Health and Human Sciences College, and the Sciences College; students from the Engineering College use the virtual library less than students from the Liberal Arts College.

Image-Seeking Preferences Among Undergraduate Novice Researchers

Objective – This study investigated the image-seeking preferences of university freshmen to gain a better understanding of how they search for pictures for assignments. Methods – A survey was emailed to a random sample of 1,000 freshmen enrolled at Oregon State University in the fall of 2009. A total of 63 surveys were returned. Results – The majority of students indicated they would use Google to find a picture. Nineteen respondents said they would use a library, librarians, and/or archives. Conclusions – The results indicate the majority of students in our study would use Google to find an image for coursework purposes; yet the students who suggested they would use Google did not mention evaluating the images they might find or have concerns about copyright issues. Undergraduate students would benefit from having visual literacy integrated into standard information literacy instruction to help them locate, evaluate, and legally use the images they find online. In addition, libraries, librarians, archivists, and library computer programmers should work to raise the rankings of library digital photo collections in online search engines like Google.

Sister library cooperation: Inspiring cross-cultural capability for librarians

The study examined the perceptions of team members of a sister library initiative between Nimbe Adedipe Library, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria and the Valley Library, Oregon State University, Corvallis, USA. An online survey and focus group discussion were used as data collecting instruments. All of the 26 members of the team were sent an email to respond to an online questionnaire; only 16 members responded representing a 61.5% response rate, while 20 members participated in the focus group discussions. The finding revealed that members had positive perceptions towards the relationship. They were enthusiastic in learning about each other’s culture; thereby inspiring cross-cultural capabilities in knowledge and information handling. Although members on both sides of the relationship had great concerns about the technology gap between the libraries, the study revealed that they were willing and looking forward to assisting one another.