’I always stick with the first thing that comes up on Google…’ Where People Go for Information, What They Use, and Why

by: Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Donna M. Lanclos, and Erin M. Hood

• The Visitors and Residents project seeks to identify and recommend strategies that IT staff and library professionals can adopt to help students and faculty members better discover, access, and evaluate digital information.
• The project team interviewed participants from four educational stages — from emerging (high school/secondary school seniors and first-year college students) through experiencing (faculty members) — that focus on context and motive rather than age as a determining factor in information-seeking behaviors.
• In addition to identifying how and why individuals engage with technology to acquire the information, the project offers recommendations on how to build relationships with community members and how to study user behavior to better test and develop library systems.

Read the article
Educause site