CULTech Blog

Uris Library, Cornell University

One of the reports on higher ed and technology that I make a point of reading every year when it comes out is The ECAR (EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research) Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. I read it because it never fails to give me at least one “aha” moment that shifts my understanding of how undergraduates use technology in their academic and personal lives. The 2009 Study didn’t disappoint in that regard, hence this post.

Reading through the report’s Key Findings synopsis, which at 13 pages is a much less daunting task than the 130 pages of the full report, the first statistic that caught my eye was the result on p. 4 that 94.6% of the 30,000-plus students surveyed used their college or university library website at a weekly median frequency. That level of use struck me as higher than I remembered from earlier reports, so I checked the full 2009 report and found on p. 46 that, indeed, student use of their library sites has stayed at about 95% for the last four years.

What I saw next in the full report, a statistic that didn’t make the cut for the Key Findings, was this year’s game changer for me: “the percentage of students who reported using the library website daily has increased from 7.1% in 2006 to 16.9% in 2009.” Daily. Huh. This trend, a twofold increase in undergraduates’ daily use of their library websites, is significant because it adds an important nuance to a near-axiomatic assumption that underlies the library technology mantra of “we need to bring our networked services to places where our users already are.” When we talk about places where our users already are, we almost automatically think of those places as some other places, as sites other than the library’s website. The ECAR Undergrads and IT finding reminds us as library service providers that, though our student users may spend a lot of their web time somewhere else, they are right here in our own web spaces, too, and in fact are here with increasing frequency, which calls upon us to do our best to meet their needs while they’re here.

The ECAR finding on students’ increased daily use of library sites resonated for me, too, because it supports the considerable commitment that the Cornell Library has made to its own website. Cornell Library staff implemented a thorough overhaul of the site in the past year and the site redesign was marked by extensive efforts to understand better how our users engage with our networked services and to let what we learned about that engagement drive the redesign of the site. Further, the Library has earmarked resources for the ongoing improvement of the site, which also will be driven by direct interaction with our users. With the Library’s investments in its website in mind, it’s all the more reassuring for me to see that students throughout academia are more and more often turning to their library websites as a resource.