This study looks at how American college students at 4-year colleges are using reference services, with an emphasis on remote use. The report has highly detailed data pinpointing who emails librarians, who uses virtual reference services, who contacts reference librarians via phone, or text, or in-person, or through forms on the library website. The study gives specific and unique data about users of each of these ways of contacting reference librarians. In addition, the study looks at student comfort level in approaching reference librarians, enabling the study’s end user to identify students with a high discomfort level. Also, the report looks at overall comfort levels in approaching librarians online.
Just a few of this 124-page report’s many findings are that:
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Nearly 29% of all students sampled had asked for help from a reference librarian though an email.
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Students studying healthcare-related professions and those studying criminal justice were much more likely than those studying other disciplines to contact a librarian by phone.
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Students at high tuition colleges were much more likely than those at lower tuition colleges to have asked a librarian a question in person in the library.
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About 14% of students sampled found it to some degree difficult to contact a librarian online.
Data in the report is broken out by more than 20 personal and institutional variables, so, for example, readers can get specific data on the percentage or English majors vs History majors who have ever asked a reference librarian a question or the percentage of men vs women who have used the college or university virtual reference service.
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.