Digital Commons Network^™

Undergraduate Science Students And Electronic Scholarly Journals, Carol Tenopir, Richard Pollard, Peiling Wang, Dan Greene, Elizabeth Kline, Julia Krummen, Rachel Kirk

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Phase I of a 2‐phase project funded by the NSF‐National Science Digital Library Project used focus groups to determine how undergraduate science students perceive journal literature and how they use digital library resources. Their perceptions and use are contrasted with faculty and graduate teaching assistants in engineering, chemistry, and physics. Undergraduates have difficulties understanding journal articles. Although they consider themselves experts on the web, they rarely use online indexes or e‐journals unless required to for class. E‐Journals should be incrementally introduced to students starting at the time they declare a major. E‐Modules developed by the library and faculty could introduce …