Background « ERIAL Project. The Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project is a two-year study of the student research process. The project is funded by an LSTA grant awarded to Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) by the Illinois State Library. The goal of the project is to understand how students do research, and how relationships between students, teaching faculty and librarians shape that process. ERIAL is also an applied study—that is, research pursued with the purpose of uncovering, understanding and addressing social problems.
As such, its goal is to use the results to develop more user-centered library services. ERIAL is built on a unique ethnographic methodology, which employs close observation of students’ research habits. ERIAL is a collaborative effort of five Illinois universities: DePaul University, Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU), Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS). Eye-opening insights into college libraries and student culture. College Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know - Books / Professional Development - Books for Academic Librarians - New Products. – USATODAY.com. CHICAGO -- For a stranger, the main library at the University of Illinois at Chicago can be hard to find. The directions I got from a pair of clerks at the credit union in the student center have proven unreliable. I now find myself adrift among ash trees and drab geometric buildings. Finally, I call for help. Firouzeh Logan, a reference librarian here, soon appears and guides me where I need to go.
Most students never make it this far. This is one of the sobering truths these librarians, representing a group of Illinois universities, have learned over the course of a two-year, five-campus ethnographic study examining how students view and use their campus libraries: students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it. The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions. Pragmatism vs. What Students Don't Know. CHICAGO -- For a stranger, the main library at the University of Illinois at Chicago can be hard to find. The directions I got from a pair of clerks at the credit union in the student center have proven unreliable. I now find myself adrift among ash trees and drab geometric buildings. Finally, I call for help. Firouzeh Logan, a reference librarian here, soon appears and guides me where I need to go.
Several unmarked pathways and an escalator ride later, I am in a private room on the second floor of the library, surrounded by librarians eager to answer my questions. Most students never make it this far. This is one of the sobering truths these librarians, representing a group of Illinois universities, have learned over the course of a two-year, five-campus ethnographic study examining how students view and use their campus libraries: students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it.
However, the researchers did not place the onus solely on students. Pragmatism vs. US study shows Google has changed the way students research - and not for the better. Many university students use scholarly databases like they would Google, revealing an astonishingly poor understanding of how to refine searches for better research results, a US study has found. The Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project, a two-year study of the student research process involving five US universities, included extensive interviews with students, librarians and other academics in an effort to better understand 21st Century student research habits.
The study, to be published by the American Library Association under the title Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know, revealed worryingly crude research skills among the students surveyed. Many were unwilling to ask university librarians for help – or even knew that they could ask. “While students used the libraries at all five universities pretty extensively, librarians were absent from most students’ academic worldview. Google-style databases A global problem?