David Nicholas, Paul Huntington, Hamid R. Jamali, Ian Rowlands and Maggie Fieldhouse
This study provides evidence on the actual information‐seeking behaviour of students in a digital scholarly environment, not what they thought they did. It also compares student…
Abstract
Purpose
This study provides evidence on the actual information‐seeking behaviour of students in a digital scholarly environment, not what they thought they did. It also compares student information‐seeking behaviour with that of other academic communities, and, in some cases, for practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were gathered as part of CIBER's ongoing Virtual Scholar programme. In particular log data from two digital journals libraries, Blackwell Synergy and OhioLINK, and one e‐book collection (Oxford Scholarship Online) are utilized.
Findings
The study showed a distinctive form of information‐seeking behaviour associated with students and differences between them and other members of the academic community. For example, students constituted the biggest users in terms of sessions and pages viewed, and they were more likely to undertake longer online sessions. Undergraduates and postgraduates were the most likely users of library links to access scholarly databases, suggesting an important “hot link” role for libraries.
Originality/value
Few studies have focused on the actual (rather than perceived) information‐seeking behaviour of students. The study fills that gap.
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Ian Rowlands, David Nicholas, Peter Williams, Paul Huntington, Maggie Fieldhouse, Barrie Gunter, Richard Withey, Hamid R. Jamali, Tom Dobrowolski and Carol Tenopir
This article is an edited version of a report commissioned by the British Library and JISC to identify how the specialist researchers of the future (those born after 1993) are…
Abstract
Purpose
This article is an edited version of a report commissioned by the British Library and JISC to identify how the specialist researchers of the future (those born after 1993) are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years' time. The purpose is to investigate the impact of digital transition on the information behaviour of the Google Generation and to guide library and information services to anticipate and react to any new or emerging behaviours in the most effective way.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was virtually longitudinal and is based on a number of extensive reviews of related literature, survey data mining and a deep log analysis of a British Library and a JISC web site intended for younger people.
Findings
The study shows that much of the impact of ICTs on the young has been overestimated. The study claims that although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.
Originality/value
The paper reports on a study that overturns the common assumption that the “Google generation” is the most web‐literate.
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Khurshid Ahmad, Zheng Jian Ming and Muhammad Rafi
The purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to quantify the prominence and impact of published literature within the field. The research has been conducted with the intent of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to quantify the prominence and impact of published literature within the field. The research has been conducted with the intent of obtaining the expansion and characteristics of the literature on digital library.
Design/methodology/approach
More than 4,206 documents found in the period of 2002-2016 were collected from the ISI Web of Science and were analyzed to explore the annual productivity, yearly citation, most cited articles, prolific authors, eminent journals of the subject, productivity of institutes and contribution of countries. These results are based on the types of documents (articles, reviews, proceedings papers, book reviews, editorial materials and book chapters).
Findings
The core findings are that the most productive year of publication was 2016, and the growth of citation increased rapidly; the top source of title is electronic library. The result shows that the USA dominates in the research output, with Illinois University securing the first position; the most prolific author is Fourie I from South Africa. In the document types category, the most cited sources are research articles.
Originality/value
This research is useful for the researchers interested in the field of bibliometrics as it postulates an inclusive indication of provenance in the field of library and information science.