Library Surveys

Balancing Act

"How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time," Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, was released on October 1, 2011. The full version PDF is available on the PIL website: Full version (includes appendices) (72 pages, 6.1 MB).

Project Information Literacy Spring 2011 Study

NKU was one of ten to fifteen universities in the United States that participated in a study conducted by Project Information Literacy (PIL) during spring 2011. Stephanie Henderson initiated Steely Library’s involvement with PIL in the fall of 2009. Mary Chesnut assumed her role as research liaison for the spring 2011 phase of the study.

This project is part of an ongoing national research study at Project Information Literacy, based in the University of Washington’s Information School. The report presents findings from 560 undergraduate interviews conducted at 10 US campuses during spring 2011. The library studied how the activity of course-related research may occur in library settings during "crunch time" (i.e., two to three weeks before the end of the term). Specifically investigated was the "personalized information spaces" college students create on their computing screens in order to study, research, live, work, communicate, and play while they make use of the campus library setting. Findings suggest students adopt a "less is more" approach to manage and control all of the IT devices and information systems available to them while they are in the library during the final weeks of the term. The study is sponsored with a generous gift from both Cable in the Classroom and Cengage Learning.

The final report "Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time," Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, was released on October 1, 2011. The full version PDF is available on the PIL website: Full version (includes appendices) (72 pages, 6.1 MB).