Undergraduate Students Information Behavior in the Changing Technological Era

There has been a great deal of research conducted to investigate the information-seeking behavior of difference group of users. A search of current literature, however, reveals few studies dealing with information-seeking strategies of undergraduates in the electronic era. This chapter presents the results of a preliminary study of information-seeking among 675 undergraduates at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). The study was designed to 1) explore undergraduates’ information-seeking behavior with e-resources; 2) identify the role of faculty members and librarians in assisting undergraduates to attain search skills; and 3) discover the differences between undergraduates in terms of their age, gender, academic year, and college. The study results indicated that only 3% of undergraduates use the electronic services and databases subscribed to by the SQU main library. In addition, the results showed that 57.7% of the undergraduate students at SQU used the Google search engine for their initial search. There is a statistical difference between undergraduate students in terms of their age and use of e-resources. Finally, this study found the role of faculty members and librarians in assisting undergraduates to learn search strategies is almost absent.