Factors Influencing Distance-Education Graduate Students' Use of Information Sources: A User Study.

The article presents the results of a study on factors influencing distance-education graduate students' use of information sources. With the phenomenal growth of distance education in the U.S. as of 2004, there is an increasing interest in exploring the information usage by distance-education students. There are several characteristics of distance education, among which the physical separation of distance-education students from their instructors and absence of a learning group during the learning process were very salient. Given these fundamental differences, questions arise on the special information needs and trends in information usage by distance-education students. Convenience has often been cited as the primary reason for choosing other information sources. This phenomenon reflects the principle of least effort, which highlights users' tendency to choose easily available information sources in preference to pursuing higher-quality sources in the use of which requires a greater effort from them. Physical distance makes many distance-education students turn to information sources easily available to them. However, the existing cutting-edge information technology can eliminate the physical distance. Therefore, the underlying factors influencing the library use of distance-education students warrant a further investigation.