Foster-Gibbons.indb

Studying Students

The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester

edited by

Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons

Association of College and Research Libraries

A division of the American Library Association

Chicago 2007

Edited by

Nancy Fried Foster

Susan Gibbons

Studying Students:

The Undergraduate Research Project

at the University of Rochester

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National

Standard for Information Sciences–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI

Z39.48-1992. ∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Studying students : the Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester / edited by

Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8389-8437-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. University of Rochester. River Campus Libraries--Case studies. 2. University of Rochester-

-Students--Case studies. 3. Academic libraries--Use studies. 4. Report writing. 5. Research. 6.

Study skills. I. Foster, Nancy Fried. II. Gibbons, Susan (Susan L.), 1970-

Z733.U868S78 2007

025.5’877--dc22

2007028559

Printed in the United States of America.

11 10 09 08 07

5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction to the Undergraduate Research Project

Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons

one. Faculty Expectations of Student Research

Barbara Alvarez and Nora Dimmock

two. Asking Students about Their Research

Vicki Burns and Kenn Harper

three. Night Owl Librarians: Shifting the Reference Clock

Suzanne Bell and Alan Unsworth

four. Library Design and Ethnography

Susan Gibbons and Nancy Fried Foster

five. Dream Catcher: Capturing Student-Inspired Ideas for the Libraries’ Web site

Jane McCleneghan Smith and Katie Clark

six. Photo Surveys: Eliciting More Than You Knew to Ask For

Judi Briden

seven. Mapping Diaries, or Where Do They Go All Day?

Katie Clark

eight. What an Experience: Library Staff Participation in Ethnographic Research

Helen Anderson and Ann Marshall

nine. Then and Now: How Today’s Students Differ

Sarada George

ten. The Mommy Model of Service

Nancy Fried Foster

eleven. Conclusion: Creating Student-Centered Academic Libraries

Susan Gibbons and Nancy Fried Foster

References

Author bios

The University of Rochester’s River Campus

Libraries are known as innovative and forward

thinking, especially in the areas of reference out-

reach, online catalogs, institutional repositories,

and Web-based services. Still, the library staff

wanted to do more to reach students and their in-

structors in support of the university’s educational

mission. But to do more, we realized we needed

to know more about today’s undergraduate stu-

dents—their habits, the academic work they are

required to do, and their library-related needs.

In particular, we were interested in how students

write their research papers and what services,

resources, and facilities would be most useful to

them. As Katie Clark, director of the Carlson

Science and Engineering Library, remarked early

in this project, “Papers happen,” but we did not

know how they happen.

Tus, in the summer of 2004, a group of

librarians and the River Campus Libraries’

lead anthropologist met at a park on the shore

of Lake Ontario for lunch and a discussion

of some research we might do to enlarge our

knowledge of undergraduate work processes.

Many of us had participated in a previous

study, supported by a grant from the Institute

for Museum and Library Services, to exam-

ine the work practices of faculty members in

order to build a better institutional repository

(Foster and Gibbons 2005). Based on the suc-

cess of that study, we decided to use similar

anthropological and ethnographic methods

to examine how undergraduate students write

their research papers. Te information collected

in this study would guide the libraries’ efforts

to improve library facilities, reference outreach,

and the libraries’ Web presence.

Defining the Problem

Our first task was to identify one trenchant

research question to guide the project. The

question we developed was, What do students

really

do when they write their research papers?

Between the assignment of a research paper and

the finished, submitted product was a black box

that largely concealed the processes undertaken

by the student. We wanted to take a peek into

that box to see what we could find. We felt that

this question accurately reflected our ignorance

of student work habits while providing a man-

ageable focus for our information-gathering

activities.

We took a general approach, avoiding pre-

suppositions. We wanted to begin our project

by exploring students’ practices; we did not

set out to prove a point. Our initial aim was

to be able to describe in detail how students

actually write their research papers. Tis

would enable the library staff to develop new

ways to help students meet faculty expecta-

tions for research papers and become adept

researchers.

Introduction to the Undergraduate Research Project

Nancy Fried Foster is Lead Anthropologist at the River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester; e-mail:

nfoster@library.rochester.edu. Susan Gibbons is Associate Dean, Public Services and Collection Development at the

River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester; e-mail: sgibbons@library.rochester.edu

Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons

Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester

Laying the Groundwork

Once we had decided to conduct the research, we

submitted complete documentation ofproject goals,

methodologies, and protocols to the University of

Rochester’s Research Subjects Review Board and

received the board’s approval for the study. Partici-

pation in the study was completely voluntary.Each

student signed a consent form prior to participating

and understood that s/he could withdraw at any

time without explanation. Students also gave us

permission to reproduce photographs, maps, and

drawings in this book.

Approach

Before we actually talked to any students, we

wanted to understand what their instructors

expected of them, so we created a set of ques-

tions to ask faculty members. These questions

concerned:

• Hallmarks of a good research paper

• How instructors expect students to find

books and articles for their research pa-

pers and assignments

• How librarians can help students com-

plete their research papers and assign-

ments

• Obstacles to successful completion of re-

search papers and assignments

In Chapter 1, Barbara Alvarez and Nora

Dimmock review the methods, findings, and

applications of this study of faculty expecta-

tions.

Once we were able to add an understanding

of student practices with these faculty expecta-

tions, we anticipated that we would want to

implement changes or improvements in three

major areas: reference outreach, facilities, and

Web services. Accordingly, we created three

subteams to investigate the questions that

seemed to us most important.

For example, in the area of reference out-

reach, we sought to learn:

• What steps students take when they work

through their assignments and write their

papers

• Successful and unsuccessful research and

planning strategies

• Library and nonlibrary resources that stu-

dents commonly use

• Te differences between the successful

strategies of high-achieving students and

the experiences of overwhelmed students

• Where students go for help

In Chapter 2, Vicki Burns and Kenn Harper

describe interviews conducted at the reference

desk and, later, in the student union, to un-

derstand how and why students approach the

reference desk, when they avoid it, and where

else they go to get help. Suzanne Bell and Alan

Unsworth delve into the data in Chapter 3 to

describe one particular pilot program in which

librarians adjusted their hours to accommodate

students by staying on the reference desk until

11 P.M. during student crunch times.

A second subteam examined how students

use the libraries’ facilities and other campus lo-

cations, and what effects space and furnishings

have on student research and writing practices.

We wanted to look at these issues:

• When and why students choose the li-

brary as a physical space, and when and

why they work elsewhere

• Which parts of the library students like

best or least, and why

• What students wish the library had, al

lowed, facilitated, or provided

In Chapter 4, Susan Gibbons and Nancy

Fried Foster discuss the methods we used to

collect this information, some of our insights,

and the ways we are applying our new knowl-

edge and skills in a major library renovation

project.

Te third subteam explored how students

use our website and other websites, and how

that information might help us improve our

Web presence. We started out asking

Introduction

vii

• What students need to do on the Web

• How the library fits into their Web usage

• What students do online and what more

they

wish

they could do online

• How the library website does or does not

meet student needs for doing their re-

search papers and assignments

Jane McCleneghan Smith and Katie Clark

review the methods and results of the two stu-

dent design workshops we held to answer these

questions in Chapter 5.

Additional Investigations

There was so much we wanted to know that we

added research activities. One of our greatest

challenges was to learn more about the students’

academic activities outside of the library and the

nine-to-five workday.We had great success asking

students to document these times and places for

us and then engaging them in discussions about

the resulting photos, maps, and drawings. We

also conducted interviews late at night,in student

dorms,to learn more about how students use their

computers and to capture the sights and sounds

of residential life.

In Chapter 6, Judi Briden reviews a method

we developed for using student photographs

as a means of learning more about those parts

of their lives that are otherwise inaccessible to

us. Katie Clark describes yet another approach

we took to gain insight on the students’ days in

Chapter 7. Using campus maps, students traced

out their movements for us during an entire

day. In this chapter we see the method and

some of our surprising findings.

What It All Means

The final four chapters of this book take a few

steps back to discuss some of the project’s higher-

level findings. Some of these findings relate to

our own staff and the effects of participation on

their attitudes and understandings. In Chapter 8,

Helen Anderson and Ann Marshall discuss the

inclusive nature of the project and how this led

to new and better working relationships among

library staff and to improved relations between

library staff and students.

Today’s undergraduate students are very

different from past generations of college stu-

dents. In Chapter 9, Sarada W. George pulls

out some of the interesting characteristics of

the undergraduates who participated in our

study. She also reviews the literature on past

and current generations of college students and

discusses how our local findings accord with

the conclusions of other studies.

In Chapter 10, Nancy Fried Foster draws on

information gathered throughout the project to

examine how service means different things to

librarians and students and to draw out the im-

plications of those differences for libraries.

Our concluding chapter suggests how lo-

cal user studies, such as our Undergraduate

Research Project, are a necessary component of

any student-centered academic library.

Acknowledgements

The authors of these chapters write on behalf

of a much larger group of people who attended

meetings, held video camcorders, checked tran-

scripts, brainstormed ideas, and participated in

many other ways in this project.We acknowledge

with gratitude the work of Jody Asbury,Margaret

Becket, Charlie Bush, Sue Cardinal, Diane Cass,

Ellen Cronk, Michael DiMauro, Chris Finger,

Stephanie Frontz,Denise Hoagland,Mary Huth,

Isabel Kaplan,David Lindahl,Diana Luce,Kathy

McGowan, Lorraine Porcello, Shirley Ricker,

Deborah Rossen-Knill, Nancy Speck, and Dan

Watts. We thank Dean Ronald Dow and As-

sociate Dean Stanley Wilder for material and

moral support. And we thank more than one

hundred students who graciously allowed us into

their dorms, took photographs, made maps, drew

pictures, and participated in interviews so that we

could understand how they write their papers.

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Barbara Alvarez

is a reference librarian and subject

librarian for Modern Languages and Cultures

in Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester.

Besides working at the reference desk, she pro-

vides bibliographic instruction, manages foreign

language and literature collections, participates

in several digital initiatives, and forms part of

the River Campus Libraries’ usability team. Bar-

bara holds an MA in Hispanic literatures and an

MLIS, both earned at the University of Alberta,

Canada.Before joining the Reference Department

at Rochester in 2001, she worked as a reference

librarian and Spanish language instructor at the

University of Alberta.

Helen Anderson

is Head, Collection Development,

and subject librarian for Russian Studies at the

River Campus Libraries. Prior to joining the

University of Rochester she was Slavic and East

European Studies librarian, then Head of the

Humanities and Social Sciences Collections De-

partment at McGill University Libraries. Helen

provides leadership for River Campus Libraries’

subject librarians program. She presented a talk

titled “Subject Librarians, Collection Develop-

ment and the Culture of Assessment” at ARL’s

Library Assessment Conference in September

2006.

Suzanne Bell

has been a librarian and educator for

many years, holding a variety of subject librarian

and instruction positions at several institutions.She

is currently the librarian for economics and data

in the Reference Department of the Rush Rhees

Library at the University of Rochester.She has been

an adjunct instructor for the University of Buffalo

Library School and is the author of

The Librarian’s

Guide to Online Searching,

published in 2006.

Judi Briden

is Digital Librarian for Public Services

at the University of Rochester, River Campus Li-

braries. She leads the libraries’ metasearch group,

advises on content and design for the libraries’

Web redesign project, and serves on the Mellon-

funded eXtensible Catalog project team.She is the

subject librarian for Brain and Cognitive Sciences

and the American Sign Language Program. She

earned an MLIS from the University of Texas at

Austin.

Vicki Burns

is Head, Rush Rhees Reference