In our planning year, we reviewed studies of how people do research in the library or using resources and technology provided by the library. We did this because we want to understand how people make use of a variety of current tools and resources and how well these tools and resources support their work. Our aim is that XC will provide better tools than the ones people are currently using. Beyond this, we want to build XC specifically to meet identified work practices and preferences, so that it will be both intuitive and innovative in ways that meet current and emerging needs.
We reviewed existing studies to see whether further studies were required. Thus, we reviewed a wide variety of publications, research websites, research reports, and personal communications about proposed and current research. We wanted to learn what we could from research that has already been conducted. We also wanted to determine whether our proposed research is really necessary.
We have concluded that there is a need for additional research, and we hope to conduct a four-site study of faculty and student researchers, to understand how they learn about the existence of scholarly resources, how they obtain those resources for their own use, and how the disseminate information about those resources to others.
In the attached report, we review a number of different kinds of relevant research studies and describe their value to our project.