Abstract
Anecdotal evidence from user surveys and the experiences of information professionals portray a picture that today’s students (i.e., “digital natives”) do not differentiate between the variety of information resources online. The issue of container only becomes problematic to these students when they have to produce a scholarly work and cite their information sources. Then the question becomes, “What is it?” This paper will present preliminary data from a survey of university students on how they recognize and label electronic information resources. The authors will explore such questions as: Do users recognize an e-book as a book? If not, how do they categorize it? Does the amount and placement of labeling from the publisher make a difference in their recognition? Do they differentiate between an academic database and a search engine? Are a newspaper article and a peer-reviewed journal article considered synonymous?
Positively Perplexing E-Books: Digital Natives’ Perceptions of Electronic Information Resources
Anecdotal evidence from user surveys and the experiences of information professionals portray a picture that today’s students (i.e., “digital natives”) do not differentiate between the variety of information resources online. The issue of container only becomes problematic to these students when they have to produce a scholarly work and cite their information sources. Then the question becomes, “What is it?” This paper will present preliminary data from a survey of university students on how they recognize and label electronic information resources. The authors will explore such questions as: Do users recognize an e-book as a book? If not, how do they categorize it? Does the amount and placement of labeling from the publisher make a difference in their recognition? Do they differentiate between an academic database and a search engine? Are a newspaper article and a peer-reviewed journal article considered synonymous?