Going the Distance for Grads: What Online Graduate Students Want from the Library

Abstract

With new program additions and changes to existing graduate programs, librarians at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas were interested in investigating if students taking online courses were successful in accessing the library services and instruction. A survey was created that included all types of graduate students (fully online to fully in-person) to identify how they accessed the library and how confident they were in finding resources. The results of this survey have provided the researchers insight regarding successful strategies and where we need to improve; where distance learners are struggling more than on-campus students; and how we need to create varied approaches to disseminate library information and instruction. The study has also opened up communication and stronger collaborations with teaching faculty and instructional designers to better integrate the libraries into the curriculum. To help make findings more generalizable, the researchers aligned them with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Standards for Distance Learning Library Services.