When Students Hit the Surf
by John Lubans Jr. -- School Library Journal, 9/1/1999
What kids really do on the Internet. And what they want from librarians.
John Lubans Jr. (Lubans1@aol.com) is deputy university librarian at Duke University in Durham, NC.
There's no doubt about it: something revolutionary is going on in libraries, and that something is students and the Internet. But the question on a lot of librarians' minds is how students are using the Net. Is it broadening their access to high-quality resources--or leading them to wade mindlessly though endless streams of junk?
The prevalent view among educators seems to be that unsupervised student use of the Internet is uninformed, frivolous, haphazard, or worse. Is that true? How much have we consulted our students about what they do online? With something as revolutionary as the Internet, it seems to me that asking students what they' re doing--and how we as librarians can help them--is an essential piece of the planning puzzle. So, since 1997, I've been exploring the Internet phenomenon in a series of surveys here at Duke University.
You might wonder why a university librarian is speaking to school and public librarians about students and their Internet use. For one thing, we share the same users--many of your students will become our students. For another, I have some firsthand knowledge about students in the age range you serve. One of my surveys was of 226 7th- to 10th-graders who spent the 1998 summer at Duke. I wanted to see what they were doing with the Internet to discern what an academic library could expect when these students arrived as undergraduates. The bulk of respondents in my other two surveys were college freshman (see "About the Studies" below). What I learned from these studies form the basis for the conclusions offered here.
The bad news is that most students feel they don't need a librarian to help them find resources. Our users relish their newfound independence and want more of it. What's more, many of our students rely heavily on the Internet to do research, and expect their dependence on it only to increase.
While these may be worrisome findings, they're balanced by this: young people place great value on librarians and have implicit trust in what we do. What words of advice did members of my freshmen focus group have for future students? "Befriend a reference librarian," said one student. Added another: "The secret to success is to ask for help when needed, or even when not needed, in order to establish a relationship [with the librarian]."
Contrary to what some adults think, many teens do pretty well at finding good information on the Web. At the same time, they know librarians can help them do better. Students want freedom, but they want guidance. (Remember, these are young adults we're talking about.) The challenge is finding ways to work with students that both respect their desire for independence and that capitalize on their trust in what librarians do.
Following are some key findings from my research.
WHAT DO STUDENTS REALLY DO ONLINE?
In all three of my surveys, much of students' time on the Web turned out to be less frivolous and more purposeful than many of us believe. In my most recent study of college students, in which the majority were freshmen, students were asked how frequently they engage in various online activities. Here's what the freshmen do, ranked from most to least frequent activities (Figure 1):
- Visit favorite sites
- Use library-based Web guides,databases
- Surf
- Play games
- Chat
Students also like to create Web pages. Forty percent of freshmen in my most recent survey reported having a personal Web page, with an even split between women and men owning a site. Among 7th- to 10th-graders, 30 percent reported having a personal site, but there was a big gender difference: 80 percent of the sites were owned by boys.
HOW MUCH DO THEY USE THE WEB?
Quite simply, a lot. What's more, students say their Web use is increasing. Why? Because they see tangible benefits from it. Asked why they use the Web for class research, more than two-thirds of college freshmen in my most recent study said the Net helped them find more sources. More than half said it's a time-saver, and a quarter actually claimed it helps them get better grades. Pre-college students claimed these Net benefits even more adamantly than the freshmen.
In an effort to pin down exactly how much students use the Web for research, I asked them to estimate the ratio of their Web use to their use of traditional, library-based resources, such as paper indexes, encyclopedias, and computer databases.
More than half of the freshmen described a ratio of traditional sources to Internet use at 50/50 or higher. Of that group, a quarter reported more than 60 percent Internet use.
Asked about their Internet use in the near future, 70 percent of freshmen thought it would increase. As for print resources, a little more than half the students thought their use would remain at current levels, while 27 percent believed their reliance on print would decrease.
HOW DO THEY FIND THINGS?
One of the things I asked students was how they learned to navigate the Net. They rated surfing as the "most important influence." Next came learning from classmates, followed by learning from library staff. I attribute this last finding to the active outreach practiced by Duke's Lilly Library staff in collaboration with the faculty's first-year writing program. Interestingly, in my survey of 7th- to 10th-graders, fewer than eight percent said they'd been taught to navigate the Web by library staff. I also asked students which search engines they used. It turns out that Yahoo rules (for now), with 50 percent of students citing it as "most used." Next came Excite, followed in descending order by Alta Vista, Infoseek, and Lycos. Making the least-used list: Look-Smart, HotBot, and Google.
HOW THEY JUDGE SITES
One of the biggest worries we librarians have is whether students can distinguish good material from the mass of online junk. I found that many students, when asked what makes for a trustworthy site, displayed genuine surf smarts. "I look for hard data, not entertainment or graphic tricks," said one focus group member. Another said confidently: "If you' ve done enough searches you can recognize [a quality site]." And you'll be happy to hear this comment from one of my focus groups: "A library-based Web link is always OK."
Here's a list, in descending order, of what students consider important in evaluating a site:
- Is based on a respected print source
- Was referred to site by peers or teachers
- Ownership is explicit
- Displays a recent date
- URL includes "org" or " edu"
- Has links to other sites
- Includes E-mail link to owner
- Looks professional
- Has a lot of pictures
WHAT STUDENTS WANT FROM LIBRARIANS
For the last few years, librarians have spent a lot of time coming up with ways to help students use the Internet wisely. We create training sessions, compile links to quality resources, and go around offering our help at Net stations. Do students want these services? I tried to find out by asking students to rank a series of library Web services on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being "not important" and 5 being " crucial" (Figure 2).
A majority showed little enthusiasm for such library staples as one-on-one training or classes about the Web. The average score for Internet classes was a tepid 2.9. One-on-one sessions earned a score of 2.6.
So what do students want? Simply, "librarians should provide access to all relevant information," as one student in a focus group put it. "Access," according to another student, means a user can either "hit the print button" or "find it on the shelf." It's clear that, unlike many librarians, students don't distinguish between material the library owns versus material we provide access to.
And though librarians still debate the issue, students in all of the surveys were strongly in favor of including live links in the library catalog. "If it's in the catalog, that means it's a worthwhile source," said a focus group member. Students also said they want us to develop finding aids to the Web--best site listings by subject. And they're looking for objective, informed suggestions about search engines, such as which work best under what circumstances.
For all our worries, it seems that students are doing pretty well on the Internet. But they could be doing better, and that's where librarians come in. We have a disciplined, rational approach to research that most students lack. The key is basing our help on what students really want and need. Instead of just doing what we've always done, let's experiment with new ways to serve kids in the new world of the Internet.
About the Studies
This article refers to three studies of student Internet use conducted at Duke University between 1997 and 1999. The questions were similar in the three studies, though not identical. In all three surveys, students were asked to respond to online questionnaires mounted on computers in the Lilly Library lobby--in fact, the questionnaire became the "screen saver" whenever the computer terminals were not in use for other purposes.
Study 1 surveyed 235 freshmen users in fall 1997. Study 2 surveyed 226 7th--10th graders on campus during the summer of 1998. Study 3 questioned 1 students in spring 1999. The majority (146) of the students in Study 3 were freshmen, and the charts in this article refer only to their responses. Studies 1 and 2 were followed immediately by focus group discussions.More information on all three studies can be found on the author's Web page, at http://www.lib.duke.edu/lubans/john.html.
