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

2. Flickr photo by aeranthes

5. Photo of Barbara Fister by Mark Coggins

7. Academic Search Premier Statistics at GAC ;

8. ASP Stats Totals

9. 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

11. 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

12. Features Very desirable (%) Somewhat desirable Not useful Not sure Limit by discipline23.139.813.323.8 Limit to core journals16.833.124.126.0 Limit by expertise15.825.326.532.4 Results ranked by algorithm 11.430.428.229.9 Limit to locally- determined set of journals 9.026.834.829.4

13. “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.”

14. 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 98.61.00.00.2 99.6 % Current articles 70.527.11.40.01.0 97.6 % Familiarity 67.027.83.60.51.2 94.8 % Large number of journals 60.732.15.70.21.2 92.8 % Multidisciplinary 28.647.120.22.91.2 75.1% Simultaneous search of popular and scholarly 24.040.726.75.03.6 64.7 % Smaller number of scholarly journals 4.021.242.621.410.7 25.2% What do librarians consider important to undergraduates?

15. Challenges Very oftenOftenSometimesRarelyNot sure Difficulty choosing good search terms 53.7% 30.914.31.00.2 Trouble identifying relevant results 42.5% 34.920.02.30.2 Too many results 31.2 34.3% 29.84.30.5 Topics too broad/articles too focused 27.332.8 33.0% 4.82.1 Articles are too technical 12.919.3 51.2% 15.01.7 Results not of high quality 5.014.3 55.8% 22.32.6 What challenges do librarians think undergraduates most often face when doing research?

17. 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

18. COUNTER Database 1 results

19. COUNTER Journal 1 results

22. for librarians for vendors for undergraduates Flickr photo by Colin Smith

23. Amy Fry: alfry@stthomas.edu Julie Gilbert: jgilber2@gustavus.edu Photo by Sara Scholin Please see our forthcoming article in portal: Libraries & the Academy (July 2008)