Overview

How do college students really conduct research for classroom assignments? In 2008, five large Illinois universities were awarded a Library Services and Technology Act Grant to try to answer that question. The resulting ongoing study has already yielded some eye-opening results. The findings suggest changes ranging from simple adjustments in service and resources to modifying the physical layout of the library. In this book Duke and Asher, two anthropological researchers involved with the project since the beginning,: Summarise the study’s history, including its goals, parameters, and methodology Offer a comprehensive discussion of the research findings, touching on issues such as website design, library instruction for faculty, and meeting the needs of commuter and minority students Detail a number of service reforms which have already been implemented at the participating institutions This important book deepens our understanding of how academic libraries can better serve students’ needs, and also serves as a model for other researchers interested in a user-centred approach to evaluating library services.

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9780838911167

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Lynda M. Duke is an associate professor and academic outreach librarian at The Ames Library, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Illinois. Her responsibilities include coordinating assessment and marketing activities for the library, as well as collection development and library instruction for the departments of Hispanic studies, economics and business administration. She served as Principal Investigator for the IWU research team of the ERIAL Project. She has published on marketing topics in College & Research Libraries and College & Undergraduate Libraries, and has presented at ACRL, ALA, IASSIST, and NITLE. She earned her master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her master’s of urban planning from the University of Michigan. ||Andrew D. Asher was the Lead Research Anthropologist for the ERIAL Project. He holds a holds a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) fellow for scholarly communications at Bucknell University, where he is conducting research on faculty publication practices and continuing his inquiries into scholarly search processes. Dr. Asher has presented widely on using ethnography in academic libraries (including ALA, ACRL, NITLE, ITHAKA, NERCOMP & ARL), and teaches an ACRL seminar on ethnographic methods for librarians.

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