This study looks at whether and how often college students use their academic library website. It helps its readers answer the following questions: who uses the academic library website and how often? Who and how often are students accessing databases remotely through a library website? How do students evaluate the training that they have received in using the academic library website?
Just a few of this report’s many findings are that:
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Men were likelier than women to have never used the college library website
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Students in the visual arts and architecture have a harder time than others finding information in the library and close to 26% experience some significant measure of difficulty.
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Students who grew up abroad were much more likely than their US-raised counterparts to be happy with their training on how to use the academic library website.
Data in the report is broken out by more than 20 personal and institutional variables, so, for example, readers can get specific data on academic library website use for first year students vs. sophomores, juniors or seniors, or for students in level 1 research universities vs. doctoral institutions, or for male vs. female or vs. transgender students, or for business/economics majors vs fine arts majors, etc., etc.
Breakouts include age, year of school standing, major or intended major, religion, gender, sexual orientation, income level, SAT/ACT scores, college grades, regional origins, race/ethnicity, level of school tuition, size of school of institution attended and many other variables. This is a critical resource for policy makers in academic libraries as well as a unique data source for social scientists and other studying higher education.