Source Seeking Database Usage Patterns for Roots of Contemporary Issues Students

Since Fall 2012, Roots of Contemporary Issues (RCI; HISTORY 105/305) has served as the foundational, and only required, course for Washington State University undergraduates. All sections feature a term length individual research project with a scaffolded series of Library Research Assignments and a culminating final research paper or portfolio. Both in Fall 2020 and 2022, the Pullman RCI and History Department librarians surveyed students about resources (databases) they opted to use to find the central materials for the project. The first round of research (n=71) was during the Covid Pandemic, characterized by the physical library closure and hiatus from research instruction workshops. The second round (n=131) was after the library reopening and resumption of research workshops. In addition to pandemic implications, this poster will feature explanations of trends in student database usage for scholarly history monographs, history journal articles, and historical primary sources. Focusing on primary sources, the researchers also learned about the format types sought (e.g., newspaper articles, government documents, personal papers) and self-reported difficulties students experienced in locating effective primary sources. Poster viewers will gain knowledge about the fixed mindset students often display as they misguidedly search a known and trusted database for material types which might not be well represented, or are otherwise challenging to discover in that system. A final factor at play in this research are the student generated research topics/questions, which also affect database selection. Poster readers will get an overall better understanding of student information seeking behaviors.