Assessment of library instruction’s influence on students’ search behaviour

Introduction; We have conducted two studies at Oestfold University College. The aim was to explore and assess how the students from nursing and teacher education faculties describe the influence of the library instruction courses of information literacy (IL) on their studies. Method; The two qualitative studies were performed by interviewing and observing the students about their skills in information retrieval. We started by interviewing and observing a group of nineteen first year students. Nine students had attended the IL instruction, ten students had not. Two years later we did a follow-up study within the same group of students to see if their search behaviour had changed. This time we interviewed and observed twelve third year students. Results; In our first study, we compared the results of the students who had attended the library instruction to those who had not. The IL instruction did not have the expected impact on our students’ search behaviour, as there were only slight differences between the two groups of students. In the second study, we compared students who had attended regular library instruction each year throughout their studies to those who had attended none or only one IL class. We found that the two groups differed more than in the first study. The students who had attended IL instruction regularly showed a better understanding of their search behaviour, recognized more databases, and talked less of Google than academic sources of information. The results of the study reflect certain differences between nursing and teaching studies regarding the implementation of IL and academic requirements. Conclusion; Our results show that the library’s continuous and "just-in-time” IL instruction contributes to improve the students’ search behaviour. In addition, the collaboration with academic staff and the academic requirements in the studies seem to influence the students’ use of academic databases.