Librarian and Undergraduate Attitudes Toward Interdisciplinary Aggregated Databases Amy Fry & Julie Gilbert ER&L Conference, Atlanta, GA 19 March 2008

Flickr photo by aeranthes

Photo of Barbara Fister by Mark Coggins

Academic Search Premier Statistics at GAC ;

ASP Stats Totals

Investigated databases Academic Search Premier Expanded Academic ASAP Academic OneFile Surveyed librarians Disseminated via various listservs Targeted those who work with undergraduates Examined usage statistics 14 Oberlin group schools (like ours) Asked students Limited sample of GAC Communication Studies students

Best features% respondents 64.6% of respondents chose at least two Least favorite features 13.1% of respondents chose at least two Full text availability63.6 Search features49.7 Interface48.5 Titles indexed37.8 Interface17.8 Full Text Availability15.4 Search features12.7 Titles indexed11.7

Features Very desirable (%) Somewhat desirable Not useful Not sure Limit by discipline Limit to core journals Limit by expertise Results ranked by algorithm Limit to locally- determined set of journals

“I wish all of them would offer better lists of subject headings. Not all students do well with key words.” “Horrible subject heading consistency.” “Students want to search databases like they search Google. I am constantly trying to break this habit.” “I find that their definition of ‘scholarly journals’ sometimes doesn't match librarians' or teachers' definitions.” “Many titles are claimed as full text, but specific issues and articles are missing.”

Feature Very importa nt Somewha t important Not very importa nt Not at all importa nt Not sure Very and somewh at Full text articles % Current articles % Familiarity % Large number of journals % Multidisciplinary % Simultaneous search of popular and scholarly % Smaller number of scholarly journals % What do librarians consider important to undergraduates?

Challenges Very oftenOftenSometimesRarelyNot sure Difficulty choosing good search terms 53.7% Trouble identifying relevant results 42.5% Too many results % Topics too broad/articles too focused % Articles are too technical % Results not of high quality % What challenges do librarians think undergraduates most often face when doing research?

Respondents (total)46 Sent statistics27 Don’t subscribe to either database6 Don’t collect statistics at all, or “they’re a mess”6 Collect statistics, but don’t have for this product or don’t have in the correct format 3 Forwarded my request to someone else who didn’t respond 3 Said they would send stats (but didn’t)1 Did not respond33 Did not contact1 Total Oberlin Group Libraries80 Requested COUNTER Statistics for ASP, Expanded Academic, and Academic OneFile

COUNTER Database 1 results

COUNTER Journal 1 results

for librarians for vendors for undergraduates Flickr photo by Colin Smith

Amy Fry: Julie Gilbert: Photo by Sara Scholin Please see our forthcoming article in portal: Libraries & the Academy (July 2008)