1 How Graduate Students Work on Their Dissertations Susan Gibbons Nancy Fried Foster River Campus Libraries University of Rochester

2 Outline Background & Past Studies Methodologies Initial Findings Outcomes

3 Studying Users Xerox PARC roots Discover real, rather than perceived, needs of our users Hired an anthropologist 3 Phases of study

4 Phase I: Faculty 1-year IMLS-funded grant Faculty work practices Digital tools Alignment of institutional repository D-Lib Magazine, Jan 2005

5 Phase II: Undergraduate Students 2-year library-funded study Holistic view of student life Writing papers Align services, facilities & web presence ACRL book- Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester

6 Phase III: Graduate Students 2-year IMLS-funded grant Builds on first IMLS study Holistic view of dissertation research & authoring Align services; Build document management system In progress

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18 INTERVIEWS IN THE WORKPLACE

19 Things Graduate Students Are Doing getting help from peers via IM and converting docs from Word to PDF saving their old stuff and going back and using it using technology to stay connected thinking about future career in terms of preparing portfolio valuing their peers’ opinions keeping track of multiple versions to publish in different places using databases saving their references printing for free at school working in teams obsessively using Facebook and MySpace keeping track of more than one work in progress using sources in research to work backward using metadata without using the word “metadata” working from home Plus 110 others!

20 Things Graduate Students Might Wave a Magic Wand to Do not worry about losing things have more time for all the interesting stuff super easy citation tracking stuff learn new software instantaneously search for a word in everything: , many computers, print save everything on my “thumb” – just touch the computer screen and it’s there have technology that never breaks and never goes out of date to be able to be a student forever to know when you’re going to finish to have everything you’ve written in paper to become magically digitized Plus 90 others!

21 Need document management system Lots of co-authoring with faculty supervisors Overloaded with pdf’s, paper articles, citations Struggling to learn literature in their fields Preliminary Findings

22 Outcomes Document Management System + Institutional Repository –Version control –Co-authoring –Citation management –“Publishing” –Web-based Shifting role of the library

23 Outcomes Changes to library services –Graduate student orientation –Better marketing of existing resources RefWorks Librarian expertise Alert systems; RSS feeds

24 More Information Studying Students –Order: talog2&_pn=product_detail&_op=2434 –Download: downloads.cfm Graduate Student Project – /View/Collection-3700

25 Susan Gibbons Associate Dean Nancy Fried Foster Lead Anthropologist River Campus Libraries University of Rochester