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OCLC conducted a series of focus group interviews with archivists and archives administrators from across the United States to investigate the needs of archivists and others who might contribute to a national archival aggregator for the Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) grant. This report details the methods and findings from those focus group interviews and examines the needs of archives and archivists related to describing the collections in their care and contributing description to an archival aggregation. From 2020–2023, OCLC conducted research as a partner on Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN), an IMLS-supported research and demonstration project to build the foundation for a national archival finding aid network to address the inconsistency and inequity of the current archival discovery landscape (LG-246349-OLS-20). The project was led by California Digital Library (CDL), with partners at OCLC, the University of Virginia Library, Shift Collective, and Chain Bridge Group.

This report details methods and summarizes findings from semi-structured individual interviews with end users of archival aggregation for the Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) grant. It focuses on their information needs and information seeking behavior related to searching and accessing primary source material, and their interactions with archival aggregators.  From 2020–2023, OCLC conducted research as a partner on Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN), an IMLS-supported research and demonstration project to build the foundation for a national archival finding aid network to address the inconsistency and inequity of the current archival discovery landscape (LG-246349-OLS-20). The project was led by California Digital Library (CDL), with partners at OCLC, the University of Virginia Library, Shift Collective, and Chain Bridge Group

Preprints play an important role in scholarly conversation. This paper examines perceptions of preprints through the lens of students using a simulated Google environment. Data were collected from 116 high school, community college, undergraduate, and graduate students with attention toward the helpfulness, credibility, and identification of preprints. Findings show preprint and peer-reviewed cues play little to no role in judging helpfulness or citability, but peer-review does when judging credibility. Further, most students did not recognize these resources as preprints. Implications and recommendations are discussed surrounding awareness and use of these openly available sources of scientific information.

This paper explores how students judge scientific news resources, as they might find through a Google search. The data were collected as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project. Students used a simulated search engine that ensured study participants found the same search results while seeking information for a science-related school project. The 116 students from high school, community college, undergraduate, and graduate communities evaluated three online news resources for their helpfulness, citability, credibility, and container. Analysis of quantitative data from the study indicated that students may find news resources helpful for a science project, but do not always consider them citable. Students appeared to focus on the organization that produced the news resource (i.e., source) when judging its credibility. Not all students identified the resources' containers as news, even when the source was widely known. The researchers note differences in judgment between educational stages. Differences were especially pronounced between high school and higher education students, with high school students more likely to find news sources worthy of citing for school projects.

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Brittany Brannon is an MLIS candidate in the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University. In this essay, she makes an argument for incorporating a rhetorical approach when assisting students with their information seeking and use. A rhetorical approach focuses on how the student will use the information they seek, and thus emphasizes identifying the context, purpose, audience, situation, appeals, and genre required to complete the rhetorical act. Brannon argues that incorporating these ideas in reference and instruction service can help guide students as they seek, select, and evaluate information.

A challenge of studying information-seeking behavior in open web systems is the unpredictability of those systems. One solution to counteract this issue is employing a simulation to ensure experimental control. However, concerns arise over the realism of such an environment. This paper assesses the realism of a behavioral simulation used to study the evaluation behavior of 175 students from fourth grade through graduate school. We assess realism through the examination of targeted participant feedback about what would have made the simulated environment and tasks more realistic to these participants. Based on this feedback, we reflect on decisions made in designing the simulation and offer recommendations for future studies interested in incorporating behavioral simulation in their research design. We find that a thoughtfully designed simulation can elicit naturalistic behavior when the controlled environment is designed to be realistic in meaningful ways. Because the simulation does not have to perfectly match reality to elicit these behaviors, designing a simulation that is real enough is an effective method to study information-seeking behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies have shown high‐level differences in people's perception and use of various information formats. However, the lack of a coherent and theoretically informed framework of elements of format has inhibited a nuanced understanding of the role that formats play in information behavior. This paper draws on theories from the field of rhetoric and composition to ground the study of information format in a social constructivist perspective that foregrounds action in context. Specifically, rhetorical genre theory is discussed in detail and the limitations of previous information behavior studies using rhetorical genre theory are explored. One of the main problems of earlier studies is confusing genres and their containers. This paper introduces and defines the concept of containers as typified ways of collecting and presenting texts of certain genres for publication. Building on rhetorical genre theory, the paper offers a theoretical exploration of the role that containers play in the formal and/or public sharing of information within discourse communities. An illustrative example of the concepts applied to data from an Institute of Museum and Library Services funded study is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the point-of-selection behavior of graduate school students in using web search engine Google for data collection. It presents quantitative and qualitative analysis of data collection methods. It highlights the impact of simulated search engines and multiple data collection methods on the development of knowledge of students. It also analyses the requirement of time, expertise and coordination in the execution of data collection methods.