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From http://www.oclc.org/reports/perceptionscollege.htm –

College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources examines the information-seeking habits and preferences of international college students. This report is a companion piece to the December 2005 OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

The 396 college students who participated in the survey range in age from 15 to 57 and are either undergraduate or graduate students. The college students were from all of the six countries included in the survey (Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, United Kingdom and the United States). Responses from U.S. 14- to 17-year-old participants have also been included to provide contrast and comparison with the college students, as these young people are potential college attendees.

With all-new graphs and additional analysis of how college student data compare to that of total respondents, this report is a subset of the original Perceptions report and provides findings from the online survey in an effort to learn more about:

• Library use
• Awareness and use of library electronic resources
• The Internet search engine, the library and the librarian
• Free vs. for-fee information
• The “Library” brand

This report looks at these questions from the point-of-view of college students and 14- to 17-year-olds. In the original study, we found that college students are more aware of and use libraries’ information resources more than other survey respondents. In addition, the more educated the respondents, the more they continue to use libraries after graduation. Awareness does not always translate into high usage.

Overall, respondents have positive, if outdated, views of the “Library.” Younger respondents—teenagers and young adults—do not express positive associations as frequently. These findings, and more, are valuable insights for anyone seeking to know more about the library usage and perceptions of college students and young people.

This subset of the original Perceptions report is appropriate for provosts, deans and academic library administration. Read the report online or order a print copy using the links at the right, then use our feedback form to tell us what you think.

I’m eager to print this puppy out and read through it.  It may be eye-opening to read about what users actually think rather than the typically confident proclamations about users needs in the off-the-cuff, hand-wavy, evidence-bankrupt way that many (most?) tend toward.  I’m as guilty as the next guy or gal, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable.

NOTE: This article has been revised and published in the Library Student Journal.

Even a cursory review of social science literature reveals a wealth of research into the role that skepticism plays in the forms of information behavior studied within communication, consumer psychology, education, journalism and media studies, and public policy, to name only a handful of disciplines. In much of this research, the effects of skepticism are found to be strong and numerous, and yet it seems that skepticism has not been studied to a great extent within the body of human-information behavior research. The goals of this paper are two-fold: the first being to establish skepticism as a factor which ought to be considered in cognitive-affective models of human-information behavior, via a large-scale overview of social science research; and the second being to show that a rational form of skepticism is a healthy trait to cultivate among information-seekers.

I am interested in the role of skepticism – defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object” – in human-information behavior (HIB), i.e., in information needs, seeking, evaluation, and usage. An operational definition of skepticism will be derived from a broad range of research in the social sciences, primarily in communication, psychology, marketing, media studies, and education, and will be expressed within the parlance of the cognitive viewpoint as a knowledge structure. Skepticism is established as a significant issue in the research of other social science disciplines, and it will be argued that HIB research would benefit from examining as well the role of skepticism. The many facets of skepticism will be explored and then applied to HIB with suggestions as to how the issue might be approached in future research. A skeptical attitude may initially be seen as a drawback to information behavior; after all, how may one seek and use information from
the multitudes of sources that one has not yet come to trust as authorities? There may, however, be important and unexpected benefits of skepticism. Finally, it will be argued that rational skepticism is beneficial, and methods of cultivating skepticism are discussed.

… Read the original paper in its entirety (though, really, you should read the published version instead).