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

As librarians on a college campus, we often feel

isolated from the lives of undergraduate students.

They are our most numerous and visible patrons,

but they have lifestyles and concerns very unlike

ours.There is growing evidence that they study in

different ways than we do and approach research

in a different fashion. By their own account, they

stay up much later than we do, fit many more ac-

tivities into a day, and stay in constant touch with

each other via cell phones, instant messaging, and

other electronic tools. By the time they are ready

to do research and writing, the librarians have

gone home. Google, of course, never sleeps.

Tis is a professional problem, as well as the

source of some social awkwardness. When com-

bined with fewer reference interviews, declining

circulation statistics, but a rising gate count, it

suggests that we are becoming obsolete. As a

building and a meeting place, the library is more

popular than ever; as a provider of reference ser-

vices, however, it is largely ignored.

How should we deal with this? At the River

Campus Libraries we concluded that it would

help if we understood our undergraduate stu-

dents better. Many of us extrapolate from our

own college careers to get some idea of the

pressures (and the freedoms) undergraduates

experience today. But a more current perspec-

tive is needed here, for technology and chang-

ing social norms are transforming college life.

Trough the Undergraduate Research Project

we studied the behavior of undergraduates in

several ways. After many months of coviewing

and sifting the accumulated data, we arrived at

a crucial point. We needed to turn our findings

into a few specific courses of action, and do it

quickly, or we would miss our chance for the

spring 2006 semester.

Since earlier studies indicated that many stu-

dents use the library late at night (Albanese 2005),

which was confirmed by our mapping diaries (see

Chapter 7), we decided to pilot offering services

on a schedule somewhat closer to theirs, to try to

reach some of those late-working students. Librar-

ians volunteered to take blocks of reference desk

time from 9 to 11 p.m. to see if our services were

in more demand then. Actually matching the stu-

dents’schedules would have kept us in the libraries

until 3 a.m., and we were not quite equal to that

challenge. We struck a compromise between our

aspirations and reality by staying until eleven.

We dubbed the pilot “Night Owl Librarians”

and timed it for the end of the spring 2006

semester. Te name was a particularly appropri-

ate double entendre since the main social sci-

ences and humanities library is known for the

owl motif that appears in carved statues on its

tower and in various grillwork and bas reliefs

inside. It was a plan that was simple, inexpen

sive, and could be implemented in a hurry.

Planning: When, Where, How Late

Planning took only a couple of meetings and a

small flurry of e-mail.The pilot Night Owl project

three. Night Owl Librarians: Shifting the Reference Clock

Suzanne Bell is Economics Subject Librarian at the River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; e-mail:

sbell@library.rochester.edu. Alan Unsworth is History Subject Librarian at the River Campus Libraries, University

of Rochester; e-mail: aunsworth@library.rochester.edu.

Suzanne Bell and Alan Unsworth

Night Owl Librarians: Shifting the Reference Clock

would consist of librarians staying until eleven on

Sunday through Wednesday nights. Experience

and data indicated that gate counts in the library

were too low to warrant staying late Thursday

through Saturday nights. Both the main and sci-

ence and engineering libraries participated.In ad-

dition to our physical presence,all of our publicity

included the reference desk phone number and an

IM screen name (askURlibrary), in case students

preferred those methods of communication.

We determined to run the pilot for two

weeks—the last week of March and the first

week of April—the tenth and eleventh weeks,

respectively, of our fifteen-week semester. Stu-

dents arrived back from spring break the week

before our first set of late nights. We knew

that several classes would have paper deadlines

approaching in that period and hoped that

our intensive flyer campaign would make an

impression in the week prior to Night Owl Li-

brarian launch.

Publicity

It is a standard marketing concept that it takes at

least five impressions to fix a product or name in

consumers’consciousness.The one drawback toour

schedule was that there probably was not sufficient

time to advertise the new service to students. We

did our best with the time available,and the materi-

als devised by our reference department assistant,

Diana Luce, certainly scored high on the “cute yet

classy” scale (Figs. 3.1, 3.2). Using the basic owl

design elements, she created flyers, signs to post

in the book stacks, table tents, and name badges.

Hundreds of copies of the flyers were distributed

to the residence assistants in all the dormitories

and posted in the student center. Seemingly every

level surface in both libraries got a table tent, and

signs were posted throughout the book stack areas

in both buildings.The flyer also worked perfectly as

camera-ready copy for an ad in the student news-

paper; one of the few identifiable expenses for the

whole project was the $60 we paid for a 1/8-page

ad.We also asked the editor of the student paper if

the paper would be interested in running a feature

story about the new service, a broad hint that was

graciously received and promptly followed up on.

The write-up was excellent: accurate and helpful.

Unfortunately, both the ad and the story appeared

in the March 30 issue of the paper, in between the

two Night Owl sessions. It was not optimal, but at

least it had immediacy.

Outcomes of the Pilot and Subsequent Sessions

After all our preparation and efforts at publicity,

the experience of working during the later shifts

Figure 3.1. Night Owl table tent

Figure 3.2. Night Owl advertisement

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

turned out to be similar to our regular service

hours. Students did not approach us because

they had seen our signs, table tents, and so on or

read the article in the student newspaper. They

approached us because they happened to have a

need, and we happened to be there, just as dur-

ing regular reference hours. We did provide help

to several people. The question that lingers for

us (and that applies to all the subsequent times

we have been Night Owls) is, Did we reach

different

people than we do during our regular

hours? Because we did not quiz each student we

worked with, we do not have an answer to that

question.

Te number of questions the desk fielded

per hour is given in Table 3.1. It would not be

appropriate to apply any sort of statistical anal-

ysis to these numbers, but we can at least say

with some confidence that Sundays are a good

night to be on duty into the later hours, where-

as Wednesdays are not. Mondays and Tuesdays

are mixed; they do not provide a discernable

pattern. Te amount of traffic we received dur-

ing the two weeks of the pilot run of the Night

Owls was enough, however, to make us respond

positively to students’ suggestions that we run

the service again at the end of the term.

Tat period, dubbed “Unofficial add-on” in

Table 3.1, was an almost completely ad hoc ef-

fort. It occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth

weeks of the semester and only on nights we

were able to recruit volunteers—thus the ir

regularity in the nights and data. We did not

do any publicity, not even table tents in the

library. What does make these data interesting

is that we have usage statistics for our regular

working hours (9 A.M. to 9 P.M.) for the same

days (Table 3.2). With them, we see an inter-

esting jump in activity during the extended

reference hours on Sunday, April 23: questions

per hour during the day had averaged only 1.4,

but from 7 to 11 P.M. we were helping an aver-

age of 3.3 people per hour. Te same was not

true for the next Sunday, however, and during

the final days leading up to the end of classes

the number of people seeking us out during

the day was consistently higher than during

our late night hours.

Te fall 2006 Night Owls appeared with

much less fanfare but far greater success, if we

measure success by level of activity. Te public-

ity consisted of flyers posted around campus,

along with table tents throughout the main

library, and having our icon (the owl) and an-

nouncement appear in the news section of

the library homepage. In this round, librar-

ians staffed the reference desk until eleven

only on Sunday and Monday nights, for the

Table 3.1. Night Owl Service: Questions per Hour

Session

Date

Sundays

4 hrs

Mondays

2 hrs

Tuesdays

2 hrs

Wednesdays

2 hrs

Initial Pilot

Week of March 26

Week of April 2

2.25

2.5

Unofficial add-on

Week of April 23

3.3

–

Week of April 30

1.3

1.5

Fall ‘06 Re-run,

Sunday/Monday only

Week of Nov. 19

2.75

1.5

Week of Nov. 26

Holiday

Week of Dec. 3

3.75

Week of Dec. 10

Table 3.2. Day Shift: Questions Per Hour

Sunday

4/23/06

Sunday

4/30/06

Monday

5/1/06

Tuesday

5/2/06

Wednesday

5/3/06

1.4

1.6

4.16

3.8

Night Owl Librarians: Shifting the Reference Clock

last four weeks of the semester (weeks 12–15).

We started the weekend before Tanksgiving

(November 19) and continued until Decem-

ber 11, with the exception of the Sunday of

Tanksgiving weekend. As noted in the “Fall

’06 Re-run” section of Table 3.1, the busiest

nights were the last two nights, the last week

of the semester.

In general, this most recent iteration of the

project showed more activity than any of the

previous sessions, with the one anomaly of the

third Monday night. Te last two nights, rep-

resenting the beginning of the last week of the

semester, were our busiest yet. With our latest

experiences, we think we may have found the

right days and timing in the semester: Sundays

and Mondays of the last four weeks of the se-

mester. In all, our results are definitely enough

to make us keep offering the Night Owl ser-

vice.

Conclusion

Hindsight is, of course, always 20-20. Perhaps if

we had started our advertising blitz before spring

break, more students would have deliberately

sought us out rather than find us by serendipity.

But can we be sure that students would remember

us after a week in the sun? We should not flatter

ourselves by believing that students are thinking

about librarians much of the time, if at all, and

certainly not over break. Funding for one more

round of the ad might have been helpful as well.

On the other hand, academia does not handle

on-again/off-again services very well. Moreover,

neither students nor faculty are big on forward

planning; they simply need you when they need

you. So timing is everything. As it turned out

in our pilot project, we did not hit the prime

paper-writing time, despite our best efforts. To

make up for this, we repeated our late nights

during the last week of the semester, earning a

moderate success.

In trying to decide the timing for the service,

the most scientific method we discussed in-

volved combing through every syllabus we could

get our hands on, making a spreadsheet of paper

due dates, and using that to determine the best

weeks to run the service. Unfortunately, we have

yet to do that analysis, and the best alternative

seemed to be simply to try to cover smaller por-

tions of more weeks at the end of the semester.

We have certainly learned that we do not

need to keep the reference desk open all four

nights. As noted above, the Night Owls ap-

peared again in the fall 2006 semester, but just

on Sunday and Monday nights. Tis reduced

schedule helped because fewer volunteers were

required (so we have fewer bleary-eyed librar-

ians in the days following), which allowed us

to offer the late-night service for several weeks

rather than just two.

Sadly, even with the provision of free coffee

and cookies during the pilot project, students

at the science and engineering library remained

stubbornly independent. Our Science Night

Owls had only one encounter during the whole

program, and they decided it did not make

sense for them to offer the service again.

Finally, we learned that, although students

are in constant touch with each other, their par-

ents, and friends via instant messaging, our ge-

neric library IM name was not an effective way

to reach them—or rather, for them to reach us.

It got almost no use. What surprised us more

was that the reference desk phone numbers got

almost no use either. We know that people fre-

quently get lost and confused in our stacks, and

we thought they might welcome the idea of

using their ever-present cell phones to call for

help. But that did not happen either. In a way

it is a positive: they are willing to come all the

way back to the desk for the benefit of human

assistance. However often it occurs, reference

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