Lived experience of students searching for information

Abstract

What is the lived experience of information seeking for senior undergraduate students? The study attempts to uncover in detail the nature and meaning of those experiences students face when they seek information for their academic assignments. The hermeneutic phenomenological approach employed in the study is characterized by an emphasis on writing as an integral part of a human science research process that aims to make lived experiences explicit in textual form. Data were collected through two separate individual interviews with 11 senior undergraduate students across three disciplines—education, social work, and history. The interviews were conversations that opened up and delved into student experiential accounts of their information seeking journeys. Descriptions and interpretations of their accounts are woven together with related literature and the researcher's own experiences into a narrative structure. The existential thematic dimensions of relationality, temporality, spatiality, and corporeality provide a window through which data are interpreted. The body of the dissertation is organized around five emergent themes: questioning the question; self-sufficiency; sense of body; text and place; due dates; and the computer. Questioning the question delves into the ways that students question a topic for their research paper. Students spoke of enthusiasm and excitement, resistance and resignation, flexibility and fluidity, and professional and practical responsibilities when approaching a topic. The experience of approaching a topic is also explored. Self-sufficiency focuses on the students' desire to be self-sufficient in their information seeking. This chapter considers the students' experience of finding help with their papers. Librarians and the reference desk are sources of last resort whereas professors are a more direct route to the required information. Corporeality of the body and the text are essential to the students' information seeking experiences. The quiet library is full of language, and the smell of the library brings back fond memories. Students' experience of format of text, whether electronic, print, or microfiche, is examined. In addition, the meaning of the library as place for students is explored. The role of time in the students' information seeking experiences emerged as a major theme. Students' lives are dictated by assignment due dates which influence their decisions and choices with respect to time, and how they limit their time looking for information. Finally, the computer theme revealed that students often anthropomorphize the computer, seeing it as the “other.” They also frequently experience “breakdown,” which causes them to move from their primary goal of finding relevant information to determining why the system is not working. The concluding chapter reflects upon students' information seeking through the librarian's voice. This chapter delves into the students' experiences as detailed in the thematic chapters, from a professional's view, including implications for further research.