The use of online digital resources and educational digital libraries in higher education

8/14/2019 The use of online digital resources and educational digital libraries in higher education

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Int J Digit Libr

DOI 10.1007/s00799-008-0036-y

R E G U L A R PA P E R

The use of online digital resources and educational digital librariesin higher education

Flora McMartin Ellen Iverson Alan Wolf

Joshua Morrill Glenda Morgan Cathryn Manduca

Springer-Verlag 2008

Abstract This paper summarizes results from a national

survey of 4,678 respondents, representing 119 institutions ofhigher education in the United States regarding their use of

digital resources for scholarly purposes. This paper presents

the following results: (1) demographics commonly used in

higher education to categorize populations such as institu-

tion type or level of teaching experience could not reliably

predict use of online digital resources, (2) valuing online

digital resources corresponds with only higher levels of use

for certain types of digital resources, (3) lack of time was a

significant barrier to use of materials while, paradoxically,

respondents indicated that they used them because they save

time, (4) respondents did not tend to intentionally look to the

Internet as a trusted resource for learning about teaching.

Keywords Digital library Education User study

1 Introduction

This article summarizes aggregate and summary results

from a national survey of higher education instructors in the

F. McMartin (B)

Broad-based Knowledge, Richmond, CA, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

E. Iverson C. Manduca

Carleton College, Northfield, MN, USA

A. Wolf

University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, WI, USA

J. Morrill

Morrill Solutions, Madison, WI, USA

G. Morgan

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

United States aimed at understanding the uses, motivations,

and barriers surrounding faculty members and instructorsuse of educational digital libraries.1

In addition, it examines discovery and use of educational

digital resources within the context of the growing desire on

the part of faculty members and instructors to use them, and

an increasing difficulty in their ability to find, access and

use them. The National Science Education Digital Library

(NSDL) aptly described the situation faculty members and

instructors face:

The rapid acceleration of information available via the

internet makes locating high-quality, accurate,and truly

useful educational resources challenging for teachersand learners. Educators, in particular, need efficient

and reliable methods to discover and use science and

math materials that will help them meet the demands

of instruction, assessment, and professional develop-

ment. [39]

A growing movement is evolving to address the needs of

faculty members and instructors wishing to find and use

online digital materials. Since the mid 1990s the National

1 For the purposes of this discussion we use the term digital library

broadly, aligning our view with that of the Lynch and Garcia-Molinadefinition: [digital libraries are] systems providing a community of

users with coherent access to a large, organized repository of infor-

mation and knowledge [31]. This definition is sufficiently broad to

include collections that formally identify themselves as digital libraries

(i.e., the National Engineering Education Digital Library or NEEDS

The National Engineering Education Digital Library), those that are

associated within the Open Educational Resource movement (e.g.,

OpenCourseWare sites such as MIT or Utah State University) or are

campus-supported repositories or members of multi-campus consortia.

According to this definition, commercial entities may also be a collec-

tion, for example, JSTOR and the growing collection of materials held

in the iTunes University website sponsored by Apple.

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F. McMartin et al.

Science Foundation (NSF) has devoted over 150 million

dollars to support this effort, particularly for the purposes

of improving STEM education at all educational levels. In

addition to the NSF, private foundations such as Andrew

W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett

Foundation have expended hundreds of millions of dollars in

support of the Open Education Resource movement, which

aims to provide open online access to online digital learningresources worldwide. This movement, led by the Open Cour-

seware Consortium, has grown to over 120 members in less

than 3 years [29]. Along with the development of such large

projects, there are rising numbers of consortia of institutions

and individual U.S. colleges and universities investing in the

creation and support of local educational digital libraries

and repositories in support of teaching and research. These

local efforts, supported by projects like the DSpace Fede-

ration [41] attest to the growing recognition that it will be

necessary to support the development and use of online digi-

tal resources in higher education.

Questions about users and how they use digital materialshave become central given the high cost of the development

and maintenance of educational digital libraries. This in turn

has prompted discussions of sustainability models for these

libraries [23,37]. To justify this investment, the actual use

and impact of the contents of the educational digital libraries

have become increasingly important to stakeholders. For all

these reasons several questions have come to the fore: What

do faculty members do with the online digital resources they

find in educational digital libraries? Do faculty value these

resources? How do they use them for teaching purposes?

What arethe barriers to their useof both resourcesand educa-

tional digital libraries? What, if any, meaningful differences

are there between groups of users based on demographic

variables?

2 Prior work

To date, research attempting to answer questions regarding

the use of educational digital libraries by faculty members

and instructors in higher education in the United States or

internationally, has with a few exceptions, been relatively

small in scale, consisting of case studies or surveys of users

of individual libraries or small samples of non-users within

a specific discipline.

From the United Kingdom there is a growing body of lite-

rature regarding digital repositories and collections, inclu-

ding analyses of the ways that faculty and instructors use

these services. These studies tend to focus on institutional

repositories and the emphasis is on examining behaviors

associated with contributing to repositories rather than loo-

king at usage in teaching or more broadly in regards to aca-

demic careers or workflows. In general terms, these studies

found that there was less use of digital collections that might

have been anticipated, but that use of repositories was posi-

tively associated with the development of an e-learning stra-

tegy on the part of the institution [7]. Respondents reported

factors limiting their contributing behavior included,

being concerned about copyright issues and whether or not

the materials they find will work with other technologies,

such as course management systems [44]. Peer review ofmaterials in a repository was seen as a positive motivational

factor encouraging use [3,4]. These same issues were also

identified by Uijtdehaage, et al. [46] study of medical school

faculty in the United States.

Other research has focused on the use of educational digi-

tal libraries and collections. For the most part these have

examined usage of a single collection or library and were

associated with searching behavior rather than adoption or

adaptation of materialsfor teaching or other professionalpur-

poses. For example, Borgman [9] found that faculty mem-

bers in geography at a large research university conducted

logical, methodological searches for online teaching or lear-ning materials much like they do when conducting research

in their disciplines. The faculty members in this study were

more able to articulate search strategies for research purposes

than for teaching purposes. In contrast, Changs 2004 survey

[12] of post-secondary and K-12 educators who were regis-

tered users of the Bioscience Education Network found that

nearly a third of these respondents discovered the site from

another web page and only 18% reported finding it through

a search engine.

When examining what users are seeking Manduca et al.

[33] foundthat geosciencefaculty members preferred to learn

about teaching within the context of the content they teach,

and that their teaching behaviors were highly influenced by

trusted colleagues. They confirmed their findings by compa-

ring results from a small set of faculty members (8 interviews

and 21 cognitive walkthroughs) using the web to search for

teaching materials, to thefindings from a survey of 5,700 U.S.

geoscience faculty members [32]. The evaluation of the MIT

OpenCourseWare collection [11], while similar to the stu-

dies described above, was a large research effort involving

both surveys and interviews to learn more about the use of

MIT-OCW materials. Unlike the educational digital library

projects that hold primarily learning objects that address a

single concept or set of concepts, the OCW site contains the

artifacts associated with an individual course, e.g., the course

syllabus, assignments, lecture slides, etc. By far, the majority

of their users are self-described self learners (49%), 32% are

students and 16% describe themselves as educators. 46% of

the educators who used it reported reusing OCW materials

by adopting or combining them with other materials. 26%

reported using the OCW site for course planning purposes,

to prepare to teach a class (22%) or to enhance their own

personal knowledge about a subject or topic (19%).

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Online digital resources and educational digital libraries

Studies of the use of educational digital libraries and

collections often evaluate the quantity of use and usability of

particular libraries. These studies for example, within NSDL

collections, have been conducted mainly for formative pur-

poses and tend to be unpublished [5]. Additionally, many of

these studies depended on usage statistics alone to address

questions such as: how many unique visitors come to a site?

What paths do visitors follow when exploring a site? Whatare the most popular times for visiting a site or what are the

geographical locations of users [25,26,36]? While studies

such as these hint at how the library is used they give very

little insight into how the contents are used. Another relati-

vely large set of usage studies is more generally associated

with studies of user interface. These studies tend to examine

how users interact with a site and have been conducted pri-

marily to test the effectiveness of the site design [8,45,47].

Other studies, well described in Bishop, Van House and

Buttenfields examination of digital library evaluation prac-

tices [8], tend to rely on the case study method and ethnogra-

phic methods. While important additions to our knowledgeabout use of a specific educational digital library, these stu-

dies provide limited insight into larger use patterns geogra-

phically, or by type of user, e.g., faculty member, attorney,

member of a political action group, etc. They do not add

significantly to our understanding of their use by the profes-

soriate in the U.S., nor to this populations knowledge about

or understanding about educational digital libraries, both of

which, are major factors that motivated the research reported

in this article.

There are studies that examine the use of educational digi-

tal libraries or collections by a larger population of faculty

members and instructors. In 2004, Harley et al., surveyed

faculty members and instructors in the humanities and social

sciences at California universities, colleges and community

colleges to learn about their use of digital resources in tea-

ching and to some extent the rest of their professional lives.

Early in their research process they found when conducting

a series of focus groups, that faculty members and instruc-

tors, though users of a wide variety of digital resources did

not understand the formalized concept of a collection or

digital library.

This finding was so stark that Harley et al. used a frame-

work for the next phase of the survey research that avoided

the language typically used to describe digital libraries, e.g.,

collections or libraries. Instead the survey language cen-

tered on the use of online digital resources that they defined,

for example, as images and visual materials to more sophis-

ticated learning objects (e.g., simulations, animations, etc.)

including those considered free or open and those that

are proprietary. Their results suggest that faculty usea variety

of these resources both to help improve their students lear-

ning and as primary sources materials in their teaching. More

interestingly, however, is why they chose not to use digital

resources. Respondents reported as their primary reason for

non-use that digital resources did not support their teaching

approach. Other barriers to use included, lack of time as well

as obstacles such as the inability to find, manage, maintain

and reuse them in new contexts [24].

Green[21] conducteda multi-methodstudyof how faculty

at liberal arts colleges in the U.S. found and used digital

images in their teaching. The researchers received surveyresponses from 404 faculty members at 33 liberal arts insti-

tutions and completed semi-structured interviews with 296

faculty staff and administrators across all disciplines. Their

findings, which support Harley et al.s research, revealed

that faculty used digital images either from their own col-

lections or from what they found using a search engine such

as Google. Faculty appeared to have little awareness of digi-

tal image collections or libraries. However they were more

aware of and used educational digital libraries more fre-

quently than they did the licensed collections in their own

institutional libraries. A majority of faculty in the study (over

75%) reported that the useof digital imageshad changed howthey taught. Faculty perceived a range of barriers to greater

and more effective use of digital images including: inade-

quate tools for aggregating and managing digital images,

issues over copyright, inadequate technical support, lack of

time to locate and learn how to use digital images and insuf-

ficient access to collections of images [21].

3 Study method

In this article, we report on the results of a national survey

of U.S. faculty members and instructors regarding the use

and non-use of online digital resources. The purpose of this

study was to provide a description of use by faculty members

and instructors at the national level and unrestricted to any

one educational digital library or collection. This research

study delved deeply into the barriers to use most frequently

mentioned in the literature [17,23] such as, time and resource

constraints, lack of access to high quality materials, lack of

adaptability of the materials themselves, and intellectual pro-

perty.

Focus groups were used to gather preliminary data to

inform the design of the survey instrument used to survey

US faculty members and instructors. Using grounded theory

procedures [20] we analyzed and identified the underlying

themes that emerged from the focus group data. Because of

the diverse nature of colleges and universities in the sample

for the intended survey, we conducted 11 focus groups with

a total of 60 participants. Two groups were conducted at

one research university, one at a community college, three

were conducted at primarily teaching universities, one group

each at two historically black colleges, one group at a libe-

ral arts college and two groups at the MERLOT International

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F. McMartin et al.

Conference2 whose participants represented a wide variety of

institutions. We sought input from this range of faculty mem-

bers and instructors because we assumed that several factors

would be critical to understanding their need for online digi-

tal resources and their search and usage behaviors, such as,

type of institution, teaching experience, teaching load, type

of courses taught, etc. Analysis of the focus group transcripts

provided some evidence of the importance of these factorsand the survey was designed to further test the value of these

factors in predicting user behavior.

Our focus groups confirmed Harley et al.s [23] findings

that faculty members did not know what educational digi-

tal libraries were. Furthermore, these faculty members and

instructors did not distinguish between a curated collection,

such as the BEN science network (http://www.bioscienet.

org) where only those items that have been peer reviewed are

made available and that of a simple of list of URLs that might

be found at a colleagues website. These findings, in addition

to Harleys, highlight how important it is to use the language

that potential respondents understand when designing surveyinstruments. So like Harley, we avoided using language in

the survey questions3 associated with digital libraries, e.g.,

collection, metadata, etc. Instead, in order to improve the

face validity of the instruments, we carefully described the

contents of collections, e.g., scholarly articles, visual images,

historical documents, etc. and asked respondents how they

searched for and used these materials.

The survey instrument consisted of 105 items that inclu-

ded demographic information, questions about motivations

for use of materials, barriers to use and descriptions of use.

To minimize survey fatigue, the survey design employed skip

logic so that respondents were asked details about their use

of materials only after indicating they used them. Questions

covered how an individual faculty member or instructor used

particular kinds of online materials, e.g., animations, simu-

lations, scholarly resources, images, etc. (see Table 3 for a

definition of these materials), if they modified these materials

in any way and their motivations for the use of these mate-

rials. Survey participants were asked to rank their likelihood

of use of a digital collection as compared to other search

engines such as Google or Yahoo.com. Responders were

also asked a series of demographic questions regarding their

teaching experience, type of institution in which they work

and so forth. External validity was determined by pre-testing

the survey with approximately 20 faculty members from

the different types of institutions represented in the sample.

2 MERLOT (http://www.merlot.org ) is a free digital library collection

designed for higher education and covers over 15 academic disciplines.

MERLOT holds an annual conference for its users and community

members, attracting upwards to 400 participants.

3 A complete list of the survey questions is available at http://serc.

carleton.edu/facultypart.

Table 1 Description of Survey Sample and US Institutions

Type of institution %Sample % US institution

Associate (2 years) 34 47

Bachelors granting (4 years) 29 28

Masters granting 26 17

Doctoral 9 7

Other/NR 2 0

Testers were also asked to comment on the survey and six

in-depth interviews were conducted to determine if the ques-

tions were interpreted as intended. To ensure for internal

validity, some items were reverse coded and Likert scales

(e.g., very unlikely to very likely, or never used to very fre-

quently used) were used throughout. Cronbachs Alpha was

run on each subscale discreetly with results of over 0.75 on

each.

3.1 The survey sample

To reach the studys population, we approached institutions

to aid us in contacting their faculty members and instructors.

Using the Carnegie Foundation 2000 list of US institutions of

higher education, a broad invitation to participate was issued

to the majority of higher education institutions in the United

States. A likely contact was identified at each institution by

visiting the institutions web site. Contacts were generally

head librarians, heads of faculty development, or academic

deans. Of the approximately 3,500 institutions contacted,4

more than 250 responded, and in the end, 119 institutionsagreed to participate. Table 1 shows how this surveys sample

of institutions compares to the actual distribution of types

of institutions in the Carnegie list. For the purposes of the

administration of the survey, the sample was not stratified

with regards to institutional type because we felt that attemp-

ting to do so would negatively affect institutional buy-in and

implementation of the survey.

The institutional contacts were asked to send the survey to

their faculty viaemailwith at least onereminderemail. Based

on patterns of response timed with our reminders to the ins-

titutional contacts, this requirement was met by all. Faculty

members and instructors in STEM education were the pri-

mary audience for the survey and our goal was to reach and

survey the largest possible number of STEM faculty in the

4 The Carnegie Classification system from 2000 was used to describe

institutional type. We did not include those institutions classified as

special in the population of institutions invited to participate in the

survey. For reporting purposes we collapsed the categories into tradi-

tionally identified classes for analysis after testing combined groups for

internal consistency. For the full list of classifications, see: http://www.

carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=791 .

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http://www.bioscienet.org/http://www.bioscienet.org/http://www.bioscienet.org/http://www.merlot.org/http://www.merlot.org/http://www.merlot.org/http://serc.carleton.edu/facultyparthttp://serc.carleton.edu/facultyparthttp://serc.carleton.edu/facultyparthttp://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=791http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=791http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=791http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=791http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=791http://serc.carleton.edu/facultyparthttp://serc.carleton.edu/facultyparthttp://www.merlot.org/http://www.bioscienet.org/http://www.bioscienet.org/


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United States at the full spectrum of institutions. However,

because issues of use are not unique to STEM disciplines, we

felt that limiting the survey to only those faculty members

and instructors would make it too difficult for institutions

to participate in the research. Consequently, we encouraged

institutions to include their entire faculty in their invitation

to participate in the survey. The majority of participating ins-

titutions sent the survey to their entire faculty body, thoughsome sent it to a random sample of their faculty. By the end

of the survey period (September 2006January 2007) 4,678

individuals from the 119 participating institutions responded.

Of those respondents, 4,439 instructed students; the bulk of

the analysis was conducted on this group of instructors.

The demographics of the survey respondents can be found

in Table 2. Nearly a third (30%) came from Masters gran-

ting institutions, a fourth from two-year or associate degree

granting schools (26%), followed by four-year Baccalaureate

or Liberal Arts College or Universities (22%) and, Doctoral

Granting Institutions (21%). The respondents were also pri-

marily tenured faculty (41%) with slightly over ten percentreporting that they held adjunct status (13%), or were pri-

marily instructors, lecturers or held other non-tenure track

positions (12%). The majority by far, held full-time positions

(81%) and40% hadtenure. It is likelythat these faculty mem-

bers were over-represented in the sample given that 46% of

all US faculty members hold part-time positions [1].

Most of the participating institutions chose to administer

the survey to their entire faculty rather than isolating STEM-

only faculty. When askedto indicate in which disciplines they

taught, more than one third of the responses (38%) represen-

ted a traditional STEM field (biological sciences, chemistry,

computer science, engineering, geoscience, health sciences,

mathematics, or physics). Approximately 45% represented

the humanities, arts or the social sciences while about 20%

represented the professional schools, e.g., education, busi-

ness, etc. This breakdown may not reflect the instructors

disciplinary training and respondents were allowed to select

multiple disciplines.

The sample was also made up of faculty who were highly

experienced instructors, with only one fourthhaving less than

7 years of teaching experience. This approximates the age

distribution of higher education instructors with approxima-

tely 65% being older than 45years old [25]. Slightly over

half of the sample (54%) reported using course management

systems or had a course website. Almost all (95%) of the

respondents reported teaching face to face courses, though

almost a fifth (21%) reported teaching distance education or

online courses. Only 12% reported teaching hybrid courses,

that is, courses that both meet face to face and are conducted

online. If a respondent noted he or she did not instruct stu-

dents, they were skipped to the end of the survey answering

a question on the services offered by collections of digital

resources, and final demographics.

Table 2 Descriptive statistics of survey sample

Variable N %

Type of institution

Associate (2 years) 1,144 26

Bachelors granting (4 years) 960 22

Masters granting 1,345 30

Doctoral 926 21

Other/NR 64 1

College/University appointment

Adjunct 579 13

Tenured 1,834 41

Non-tenured 891 20

Permanent non-tenured 283 6

Instructor/lecturer/faculty assistant 531 12

Librarian 93 2

Other/NR 228 5

Nature of appointment

Full-time 3,624 82

Part-time 734 17

Other/NR 81 2

Discipline

Life sciences (biological sciences, health sciences) 797 18

Physical sciences (chemistry, geoscience, physics) 343 8

Computer science and Engineering 286 6

Mathematics 258 6

Social sciences 833 19

Humanities and Arts 1,139 26

Professional schools (business, education) 737 17

Teaching experience

16 years 1,278 29

NR 806 18

Use of course website/online course management

Yes 2,523 54

No 1,279 28

Unsure 71 2

NR 566 13

Course type (respondents could be in multiple categories

Face-to-face 3,620 82

Distance education/online 714 16Hybrid 396 12

4 Results

4.1 What kinds of online digital resources do faculty use?

To examine the relationship between the value of digital

resources and their use more closely, we went back to our

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Table 3 Types of digital resources

Digital resource Definition

Digital images/visual materials and historical documents Drawings, photographs, digital video, art, posters, digitized documents and similar

representations of primary source material

Online simulations/animations Illustrations or programs that are created to present a process or concept.The concept

presentation may include user interaction (i.e. a user may input information to

modify a simulation/animation)

Online datasets Any online educational, business and government datasets, and scientific research

databases

Teaching or learning activities and exercises Materials found online that are used in instructing students (assignments, tutorials,

lab procedures, problem sets, case studies, etc.)

Online scholarly resources Online journals, scholarly articles, and other scholarly discussion groups or sites

Table 4 Frequency and means for use of digital resources

Type of learning material Never Rarely Occasionally Very frequently NR

Freq % Freq % Freq % Freq % Freq % M SD

Digital images, visual materials and historical documents 379 8 617 14 1,499 34 1,930 43 19 0 3.13 0.95

Simulations, animations 1,578 36 994 22 1,187 27 503 11 177 4 2.14 1.05

Datasets 1,161 26 826 18 1,204 27 1,007 23 241 5 2.49 1.13

Teaching, learning activities and exercises 750 17 694 16 1,425 32 1,275 29 295 7 2.78 1.07

Scholarly resources 352 8 382 9 1,102 25 2,265 51 338 8 3.29 0.95

Scale: 1 = Never Use, 2 = Rarely Use, 3 = Use Occasionally, 4 = Very Frequently Use. N= 4,678

focus group data. For although these participants tended to

value digital resources highly, they also failed to distinguish

between the different types of online digital resources, e.g.,

educational digital libraries, web pages, online journals, and

were not conscious of using a digital library specifically [38].

Focus group participants defined educational digital librariesand digital resources broadly making few distinctions bet-

ween for example, a loose collection of PowerPoint slides

(available from a well known or trusted colleagues web-

site) and a collection of materials such as MERLOT. Rather

than force a definition of digital library for the survey onto a

group of respondents who most likely not equate educatio-

nal digital libraries or collections as sources for these highly

valued online digital resources, we instead used only lan-

guage describing the digital resources. We then sub-divided

the resources into five categories as described in Table 3.

To examine how faculty members reported using these

materials on the survey, we lookedat the top box score, i.e.,the resource which faculty indicated they very frequently

used. Survey results indicated that the most popular types of

materials used by faculty members and instructors included

online scholarly resources (51%) and digital images/visual

materials (43%). About a quarter of the respondents (29%)

reported frequent use of teaching and learning activities or

online datasets (23%). Online simulations and animations

were used the least with only 11% of the respondents repor-

ting frequent use.

One hypothesis tested was that use of these various types

of online digital resources would vary based on a number of

the demographic variables, most particularly, type of insti-

tution, type of appointment or level of teaching experience.

To examine this hypothesis an ANOVA was computed and

while there were statistically significant differences, theywere extremely small and held no practical significance. This

was perhaps due to the large sample size, which can some-

times obscure the ability of hypothesis testing to provide

a meaningful picture of significant differences. Therefore

effect sizes [14] were also calculated to look for differences

across groups of institutions, and disciplines. Again, they

were found to be statistically significant, but at such a small

level (less than 0.15) that they hold no practical significance.

So, contrary to the hypothesis, the preferences illustrated in

Table 4 remained steady across all respondents regardless of

the demographic variable. These results call into question a

commonly held belief that more experienced faculty mem-bers, who tend to be older are therefore less likely to use

technology simply does not hold up.

Table 5 shows that the vast majority of respondents

(approximately 60%) felt digital resources were of great

value to their instruction, potentially skewing the sample.

However, since we were most interested in what and how

materials were used, this potential bias was of less concern

at this level of theanalysis. Thehigh valueof digital resources

did lead us to ask; does the high regard for these resources

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Table 5 Value of digital resources

Freq %

Of great value to my instruction 2,766 59

Of some value to my instruction 1,608 34

Of no value to my instruction 65 1

I do not instruct students 87 2

No response 152 3

Total 4,678 100

translate into higher levels of use of digital resources in

teaching and in turn to the use of educational digital libraries

to find the resources?

To examine the interaction of value placed on digital

resources and level of use, we cross-tabulated the reported

level of use across the five categories of resources against

the level that they valued resources. Those users who respon-

ded that they greatly value these resources reported higher

levels of use than other respondents (Table 6). The most used

resources are digital images with 60% of these respondents

reporting frequent use (Mean=3.44onafourpointscale:1=

Never Use, 2= Rarely Use, 3=Use Occasionally, 4 =Very

Frequently Use)5 and scholarly resources, with 65% of these

respondents reporting frequent use (Mean= 3.51). The other

categories of resourcesdo not see this strongtrendof frequent

use even by those who report valuing digital resources highly

in their instruction. While the number of individuals who sta-

ted that digital resources were of no value in their instruction

is quite low, the use pattern seems to be logically consistent

within each category. When respondents do not value digitalresources, they, unsurprisingly, tend not to use them. Howe-

ver, almost half of these respondents report at least rare use

of scholarly resources (Mean= 1.92) and 41% at least rarely

use digital images (Mean = 1.58), possibly reflecting that

increasingly, some resources are only available in a digital

format.

4.2 How do faculty members and instructors use digital

resources?

To more fully understand frequency of use, we must also look

to how the respondents used the materials, meaning; did theyuse them for teaching purposes, professional development or

other scholarly activities? Respondents who were users of a

particular type of resource were asked to rate their likelihood

5 For questions regarding frequency of use and likelihood of use,

contrast coding (i.e., 2 being never use to +2 being very frequently

use) was used to demonstrate an aggregate predisposition for one side

of thefence orthe other. Mean differencescentered around a zero point

allow the reader to see, for example in Table 6 and Table 8, if there are

head to head differences across questions.

of using them in specific teaching or educational situations on

a four point scale from Very Unlikely to Use to Very Likely

to Use (see Table 7). Respondents reported that they were

somewhat or very likely to use only a few of the resources

for teaching purposes.Theseincludeduse of digital imagesin

lectures (Mean = 1.16), for professional development pur-

poses (Mean = 0.91), and as student study aids (Mean =

0.83). They were also somewhat likely to recommended tea-ching and learning activities to students as study aids (Mean

= 0.94). The type of resource most likely to be used ove-

rall was that of Scholarly Resources (Mean = 1.33), for the

purpose of professional development as a teacher.

Overall, the level of usage of these resources suggests that

there may be barriers to better integrating them in teaching

and scholarly work.

Given the impact of respondents valuation of digital

resources on frequency of use, we analyzed likelihood of use

under specific scenarios and found a similar pattern. Exami-

nation of one of the more popular scenarios, presentation of

digital images in lectures (Table 8) shows that the likelihoodof use is highest by those who highly value digital resources

(Mean= 1.42), and conversely, if not valued, there is a fairly

low likelihood of use (Mean=0.84). What is also apparent

is thedifferencebetween likelihood of usebetweenuserswho

value them highly and those who see some value in their use.

Here too, likelihood of use drops quite considerably (Mean

= 0.67). This type of trend is seen across each of the resource

types, regardless of the frequencyof use. Forexample, for the

least frequently used resource, simulations and animations,

thelikelihood of usein lectures varied from a Mean of 0.62 by

those who valued them highly, to a Mean of0.02 by those

who thought they held some value, and to the low of1.00

by those who did not value them. There is a consistent pattern

within each resource type; the likelihood of use increased the

more respondents valued digital resources.

4.3 What are the barriers to use?

In order to better understand the use and lack of use of these

resources, we explored what, if anything, deterred faculty

members and instructors use of digital learning materials.

The results from the survey showed that, by far, the most

commonly reported obstacle respondents reported was time.

These results contrast with those from other studies regarding

barriers to use where time was reported as a barrier, but did

not emerge as theprimary obstacle to use [3,21,23]. This also

contradicts other responses in our survey, including highly

ranking the use of these resources as a personal priority, and

that faculty members and instructors use digital resources

because it helps save time. This combined with results from

our focus groups, suggest that this response may be highly

nuanced, and will require deeper probing.

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Table 6 Frequency of use by reported value of digital resources to instruction

Great value Some value No value

M SD M SD M SD

Digital images, visual materials and historical documents 3.44 0.80 2.65 0.93 1.58 0.81

Simulations and animations 2.40 1.06 1.73 0.87 1.11 0.32

Datasets 2.72 1.12 2.13 1.05 1.36 0.80

Teaching, learning activities and exercises 3.05 0.99 2.37 1.04 1.27 0.61

Scholarly resources 3.51 0.80 2.96 1.05 1.92 1.14

Frequency of use scale: 1 = Never Use, 2 = Rarely Use, 3 = Use Occasionally, 4 = Very Frequently Use. N= 4,439

Table 7 Likelihood of use of digital resources for teaching and professional purposes

Type of use of learning material Scholarly Teaching, learning Datasets Simulations, Digital images, visual

resources activities and animations materials, historical

exercises documents

M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Presented during my lectures/class 0.52 1.47 0.61 1.40 0.21 1.47 0.44 1.39 1.16 1.17

Linked or posted on my course web-

site/course management system

0.38 1.58 0.53 1.54 0.03 1.56 0.17 1.52 0.50 1.55

Used in tests and quizzes 0.74 1.47 0.40 1.56 0.91 1.35 1.09 1.26 0.53 1.50

Recommended to students for review

and/or a study aid

0.70 1.43 0.94 1.27 0.31 1.49 0.59 1.38 0.83 1.34

For use in scholarly work, including grant

writing

0.85 1.55 0.74 1.51 0.29 1.62 1.00 1.34 0.18 1.61

For use in my own professional develop-

ment as a teacher

1.33 1.12 0.40 1.50 0.67 1.42 0.22 1.49 0.91 1.61

Presented in the context of an online class

discussion

0.30 1.63 0.29 1.64 0.47 1.53 0.38 1.54 0.13 1.64

Assigned to students as part of a student

research project or problem-based lear-

ning assignment

0.77 1.45 0.42 1.50 0.43 1.48 0.04 1.49 0.43 1.47

Scale: 2 = Very Unlikely, 1 = Some What Unlikely, +1 = Some What Likely, +2=Very Likely. N= 4,439

Table 8 Likelihood of use by reported value of digital resources to instruction

Type of use of learning material Digital images, visual materials, historical documents

Great value Some value No value

M SD M SD M SD

Presented during my lectures/class 1.42 1.01 0.67 1.27 0.84 1.25

Linked or posted on my course web-

site/course management system

0.85 1.43 0.17 1.54 1.04 1.34

Used in tests and quizzes 0.25 1.53 1.06 1.29 1.48 1.00

Recommended to students for review

and/or a study aid

1.11 1.24 0.33 1.38 0.54 1.28

For use in scholarly work, including grant

writing

0.03 1.62 0.59 1.52 1.20 1.19

For use in my own professional develop-

ment as a teacher

1.16 1.22 0.44 1.39 0.40 1.32

Presented in the context of an online class

discussion

0.18 1.63 0.71 1.47 1.24 1.30

Assigned to students as part of a student

research project or problem-based lear-

ning assignment

0.72 1.38 0.13 1.45 1.00 1.17

Likelihood of Use Scale: 2 = Very Unlikely, 1 = Some What Unlikely, +1 = Some What Likely, +2 =Very Likely. N= 4,439

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Table 9 Barriers to use of digital materials

Item Mean SD

(a) I would use more digital resources if there were more / better training available to me on how to use this

technology in my classes (n = 3,740)

0.42 1.36

(b) I would use more digital resources if I had more time ( n = 3,745) 0.94 1.21

(c) Digital resource use is not a priority for me ( n = 3,717) 0.70 1.31

(d) I would use more digital resources if it was a greater priority at my institution (n=

3,699)

0.37 1.35(e) I would use more digital resources if I had more access to technology (computers, classroom equipment,

etc.) (n = 3,726)

0.07 1.52

(f) I would use more digital resources if there were more useful digital resources available ( n = 3,723) 0.45 1.35

(g) I would use more digital resources if I had more flexibility in the content/curriculum of my classes (m =

3, 719)

0.75 1.28

(h) I would use more digital resources if the technology were more dependable ( n = 3,713) 0.07 1.43

(i) I would use more digital resources if my institution rewarded me for using them (i.e., an award, count

toward tenure, etc.) (n = 3,714)

0.05 1.54

Scale: 2 = Strongly Disagree, 1 = Some What Disagree, 1 = Some What Agree, 2 = Strongly Agree

The lack of availability of useful materials was seen by

a majority of respondents as a barrier. The only institutio-nal motivator respondents reported as being an important

influence, was the availability of more or better training on

how to use this technology in the classroom (Mean= 0.42 on

a four point scale where 2.0 is Strongly Disagree and+2.0

is Strongly Agree). This finding lends support to the com-

monly held perception that faculty and instructors who use

digital resources in the classroom must by supported with

professional development. What was somewhat more sur-

prising was the ambivalence about institutional or external

motivators, e.g., institutional rewards for use or access to

technology. Responses to these types of motivators (items

e, g, h, and i in Table 9) hovered around 0.0, meaning half

the respondents were on each side of the statement. Two

potential barriers, that the use of digital resources was not a

personal priority, and that instructors use would increase if

they had more flexibility in the choice of content or curricu-

lum in their classes were not identified as being barriers by

most respondents.

4.4 How do faculty members and instructors find materials?

How users find materials and what role commercial Internet

search engines such as Google play in this search continues

to be an issue for the educational digital library community

[30]. These communities recognize the importance of sup-

porting exploration in digital resource discovery [16,34,35].

In our research we also appreciated theimportance of unders-

tanding not only what is used and how materials are used

but also the role that digital libraries play in locating these

resources.

The results of our focus groups indicated that users relied

more heavily on trusted sources and personal networks for

finding materials than they did educational digital libraries

or general web browsing. When directing them to characte-

rize how they use the web to search for materials they usedin a class, Google (other search engines were rarely mentio-

ned) was the primary starting point for searching. Often they

reported starting with Google to find materials they already

knew to exist, e.g., a particular website attributed to a known

instructor, websites associated with established textbooks,

professional associations (academic and non-academic), or

governmental agencies. This behavior is a common search

pattern [41], and suggests that Google itself has become one

of the trusted sources identified in earlier studies [33,34].

In this way, faculty members and instructors typify behavior

associated with web orienteering [10,43], meaning that

they use resources they like as a springboard to explore other

sites linked to the original site. Using the original source as

a starting point supports their ability to re-find the new

sources.

Focus group participants may not have recognized the

digital resources they used as being part of an educatio-

nal digital library due to their reliance on Google to locate

resources. The results from the Google searches of these

faculty members and instructors obscured the type of

resource,making it difficult for them to recall if they obtained

resources from web pages, collections, or educational digital

libraries. Participants readily recalled the types of materials

and could describe how they used them, but they were not

conscious of having used an educational digital library or

collection to find them.

With this behavior in mind, the survey asked participants

to rate their tendency to use a web search engine (like Google

or Yahoo), and their tendency to use a collection of digi-

tal resources (like an educational digital library) for a given

situation. The survey instrument aligned the two different

drop-down response menus next to each situation described,

so a respondent could think in terms of one being more likely

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Table 10 Use of DL collection versus search engine for searching

When I want to find DL collection Search engine

Mean SD Mean SD

(a) Information that provides students with context 0.69 1.49 1.21 1.24

(b) Examples that get students excited about a topic 0.43 1.50 1.23 1.23

(c) Current information (data, event information, etc.) for students 0.59 1.53 1.45 1.06

(d) Something that illustrates a difficult concept for students 0.50 1.51 0.87 1.41

(e) Non-technical background for students 0.02 1.55 1.06 1.68

(f) Primary source material that I can integrate into my course 0.87 1.49 0.60 1.55

(g) Lesson plans, syllabi, or exercised that I can integrate into my instruction 0.19 1.61 0.30 1.65

(h) Information about how to improve my teaching 0.21 1.61 0.06 1.61

(i) Education or pedagogy information 0.37 1.63 0.07 1.61

(j) Information for scholarly or my professional development as a teacher 0.93 1.45 0.43 1.55

(k) Information on an unfamiliar topic in my field 1.08 1.34 1.14 1.26

(l) Information in preparation of a grant proposal 0.63 1.64 0.14 1.66

(m) Information about professional activities, e.g., conferences, workshops 0.01 1.66 1.05 1.43

(n) Stay current on new developments in my field 1.09 1.37 0.56 1.52

Scale: 2 =Very Unlikely, 1 = Some What Unlikely, 1 = Some What Likely, 2 = Very Likely. N= 4,439

than the other. The situations were grouped by those items

that were focused on finding resources specifically for their

students and those that supported course planning.

The survey results reflected the focus group findings of

users reliance on search engines such as Google. Generally,

the survey respondents reported being positively inclined to

use both search engines and educational digital library collec-

tions, but there is a clear preference towards search engines

with a few exceptions (see Table 10). These were related

to specific tasks about teaching practice where respondentswere more likelyto usea collection of digital resourcesto find

information about how to improve their teaching and when

they specifically sought out education or pedagogy informa-

tion.

5 Discussion

Lack of information about how faculty members and instruc-

tors use educational digital libraries (and in particular, use

the NSDL, their member digital libraries and the contents of

thesecollections) in theirteaching and professional academic

lives motivated this research. Members of the NSDL digital

library community have long expressed frustration with the

lack of knowledge available regarding use [18] and how this

gap has negatively affected their ability to design and imple-

ment services that meet users needs. By surveying faculty

members and instructors at a national level, we attempted

to answer our primary research question: What do faculty

members do with the online digital resources they find (and

by extension how to they use educational digital libraries)?

We also explored several other questions: Do faculty value

these resources? How do they use them for teaching pur-

poses? What are the barriers to their use (of both resources

and educational digital libraries)? What, if any, meaningful

differences arethere between groupsof users based on demo-

graphic variables?

Through theresults from both thesurvey andfocusgroups,

we examined the uses, motivations and barriers surrounding

faculty members and instructors use of educational digital

libraries. We identified factors that would help the designersof these services align their services with how faculty mem-

bers and instructors work, as well as suggest services and

features that faculty members andinstructors might find most

valuable when using an educational digital library. In the fol-

lowing section, we discuss four main themes that emerged

from the survey and focus group results.

5.1 Valuing educational digital resources does not always

translate into higher use

The trends with regards to frequency and likelihood of use

suggest that there is some barrier or set of barriers that limit

use by those who do not value them highly or who are not

highly motivated to use them. The disparity among the dif-

ferent types of resources in combination with the different

uses (teaching, research, or professional development) lends

support to the notion that adoption or use of digital resources

may occur best when the resource is analogous to what Steve

Gilbert describes as a low thresh-hold application [19].

Known as LTAs these applications make use of technology

that is easy to use, fairly ubiquitous, is fairly low cost, and

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Table 11 Use of materials by

level of experience, institution

type and college/university

appointment

N= 4,439

Group Digital images, Teaching/learning

visual materials and activities and

historical documents exercises

Mean SD Mean SD

Level of experience

06 years 3.22 0.91 2.88 1.05

7 or more years 3.11 0.96 2.76 1.08

Institution type

Associate (2 years) 3.11 0.96 2.88 1.03

Bachelors (4 years) 3.13 0.94 2.65 1.08

Masters 3.11 0.92 2.85 1.07

Doctoral 3.18 0.97 2.70 1.08

College/University appointment

Adjunct faculty 2.96 1.02 2.83 1.09

Tenured faculty 3.13 0.95 2.68 1.10

Non-tenured faculty 3.20 0.92 2.80 1.07

Permanent non-tenured faculty 3.23 0.90 2.86 0.93

Instructor/lecturer/faculty assistant 3.16 0.94 2.91 1.00

essential to the discipline. The same idea appears to apply to

digital resources and almost certainly (along with the relati-

vely small size of the item) explains why digital images were

the most frequently used resource for teaching purposes and

is likely a factor in why animations and simulations are the

least used type of digital resource.

These findings also raise questions concerning expecta-

tions around the use of digital resources and the meanings

faculty assign to their use. For example, what does valua-

tion of a resource mean to an instructor? Similarly, whatdoes it mean that an instructor uses a resource frequently or

infrequently? Expecting an instructor to use any one of these

resources all the time or very frequently during a course or

class period simply may not make good pedagogical sense

nor match an instructors teaching or learning goals. Low

usage may only reflect the nature of the need for a resource

or the fact that there may only be one seminal resource that

pertains to a relatively small, but important segment of a

disciplines population. In this case, it would be a mistake

to equate low, but carefully considered, usage with non-use.

The disparate interpretations associated with this issue indi-

cate the need for further exploration of the issue.

These results suggest that there might be services that

would increase usage in higher education. Knowing that

faculty members and instructors highly value and use digital

images, visual images and historical documents as teaching

aids suggests that educational digital libraries that do not

have these resources might consider developing collections

of images, or image of the day/week types of services to

help attract users. Given the interest in use of the materials

for their own professional development, collections might

also consider how to focus more on the professional needs

of faculty to help them use the full range of materials in

educational digital library collections rather than providing

only collections of learning materials focused towards use

with students. Providing the types of resources instructors

are seeking while at the same time offering scaffolding that

will support use of less commonly sought, but highly valued

resources, should help increase the use or value of educatio-

nal digital library collections to non-users.

5.2 Faculty are more alike than different in use of online

digital materials

One of the purposes of conducting this study was to learn

more about how faculty members and instructors differ in

their use or non-use of digital resources and educational digi-

tal libraries. Based on the findings of our focus groups, we

hypothesized that users would differ in their use based on

the following set of variables: type of institution, level of

teaching experience and type of academic appointment. For

the most part, our findings did not support that supposition.

In fact, we found that faculty members and instructors were,

with regard to these variables, more similar in their use of

these resources than they are different. Our examination of

the most popular resources and most clearly related to tea-

ching, digital images/visual materials and historical docu-

ments and teaching/learning activities and exercises, showed

few if any differences with regards to the variables listed

above (see Table 11). Considering that the majority of post-

secondary instructors have been trained in a relatively small

number of institutions and that there are rarely significant

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changes in that training based on potential career path may

partially explain their behavior. If this is the case, it suggests

that investments in future faculty training in the use of these

materials may have the largest impact.

While the focus of this article has not been on these diffe-

rences, a few disciplinary patterns of use and non-use emer-

ged. At this point in our data analysis, we have found that

no one discipline uses teaching and learning activities signi-ficantly differently from the others. Yet there is some indica-

tion that discipline may serve to be a predictor of the use of

different types of resources. Digital images demonstrates one

such potential area for further study, for it appears that mem-

bers of the Biological Sciences and Geosciences communi-

ties report using them slightly more than other disciplines,

especially when compared to the social sciences and huma-

nities and arts. This also contrasts with the findings from the

Harley et al. study that reported the social sciences, humani-

ties and arts as being strong users of these same resources.

This discrepancy confirms the need to explore these diffe-

rences and this analysis will be reported in more depth infuture publications.

5.3 Barriers to use cannot be simply defined

Given the disparity between respondents high value for digi-

tal resources and actual practices in using them, it is clear

that there are barriers that must be overcome for faculty

members and instructors to become regular users of these

resources. Research related to what motivates faculty mem-

bers and instructors to take on teaching distance education

courses found that the motivations took two forms: intrinsic

and extrinsic. Wolcott and Betts [48] found that for inten-

sive activities like teaching at a distance, intrinsic motivation

distinguished faculty who participated in distance education

from those who did not. Others suggest that faculty need

to be rewarded extrinsically to encourage them to change

their teaching behaviors to adopt an innovation. External

rewards range from support by the campus administration

(e.g., credit towards promotion and tenure for implementa-

tion of innovative teaching methods/scholarship of teaching)

and infrastructure support (e.g., teaching assistants, technical

assistance, adequate or more reliable technology) to training

in how to use the materials [13,22,27,42]. There is certainly

a combination of factors including the difficulty of the task

and the personal interest in the task, which drive what types

of rewards are required.

Other theories of change associated with adoption of new

technologies, most especially the Technology Acceptance

ModelTAM [2,15], focus on the perceived usefulness of

a technology and/or its perceived ease-of-use. These dimen-

sions are particularly important when considering barriers

other than motivational barriers. The TAM model may be of

critical importance when considering how the use of Google

defines how users search for materials, what their expecta-

tions are with respect to finding materialsand their awareness

of educational digital libraries. In the focus groups, respon-

dents repeatedly reported that Google was their first choice

for finding information. Survey responses upheld the prefe-

rence for Google. However, educational digital libraries were

rarely described by our focus group participants as being dif-

ficult to use or not useful. In this case, when usability doesnotseem to be an issue, this model may not be especially appli-

cable to use of educational digital libraries. However, it does

suggest that digital libraries should seek to leverage search

tools to bring users into their collections. If these libraries

wish to be recognized as the resource provider, the design

of these deep links needs to clearly identify the source of

the content and provide navigation that helps the visitor find

other materials.

In terms of barriers to use of educational digital libraries

and online resources, a large majority of the respondents to

our survey stated that lack of time as being a barrier to adop-

tion. The results from our focus groups contradicted this fin-ding in the sense that faculty reported a willingness to spend

the time necessary to find the right materials. It also contra-

dicts responses from the survey where a similar number of

respondents noted that they used digital resources to save

them time. These results point out the complexity of naming

time as a barrier. The danger of including a question that

asks if time is a barrier is that it fails to force the user to reflect

on the ultimate barriers that lack of time reflects. We suggest

that it is not really lack of time, for all of us have finite time,

but rather an issue of priorities. For example, when people

say that they do not have time to perform a task, it may be

a polite way of saying it is not as high a priority for them as

the other tasks that they have to do.

Barriers to use for these respondents do not seem to be one

of lack of motivation, nor does use seem to be closely tied

only to factors associated with the Technology Acceptance

Model. When talking with our focus group participants we

heard many stories indicating the opposite. These instructors

were so invested in helping their students visualize a concept

or learn something that required a digital learning object that

they would spend hours looking through page after page of

Google hits in search of the right image or item that they

needed. This kind of commitment to helping students learn,

an important intrinsic motivational force, may surpass all

other types of motivators. Motivation to use these resources

seems to rely on personal characteristics not explored in this

research.

5.4 Learning about teaching is not yet an intentional web

activity

Previous studies have indicated that faculty members and

instructors for the most part prefer to learn about new ideas,

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innovations, and how to apply them by working with

colleagues [6,32]. The NSDL and other educational digi-

tal libraries were formed to support and promote innovation

in teaching and learning. Unlike other digital libraries, those

that focus on education are attempting to build high quality

collections of innovative learning materials within a speci-

fic discipline available for reuse with the intention of impro-

ving teaching and learning. Some of these libraries also wraparound or connect these materials to information about how

to usethem in teaching. Theresults from this survey however,

suggest that fewer instructors than hoped for use the Web for

these purposes, as indicated by low ratings regarding their

likelihood to use a search engine or a digital library to find

materials to improve teaching methods (Table 10h). This fin-

ding requires more exploration as it is at odds with other

research. For example, in the geosciences, recent research

estimates that 25% of these faculty members use Teach the

Earth resources that offer both content and pedagogical sup-

port [35]. This suggests that carefully designing targeted

resources with appropriate materials can be successful.These results suggest that educational digital libraries

whose goal is to promote innovation in teaching and lear-

ning still face quite a few challenge in achieving this goal.

That said, our findings reveal that faculty members and ins-

tructors tend to prefer educational digital libraries as places

to stay current on new developments in their field and to seek

information for their scholarly or professional development

as a teacher. These preferences lend some support for buil-

ding services that support such activities within educational

digital libraries.

6 Conclusions, limitations and implications

Participants of the survey clearly did not need to be per-

suaded as to the value of some forms of digital resources.

But this is apparently not enough to ensure their use as the

respondents self-reported behavior shows fairly low levels

of use of materials thought to be of high instructional value,

such as, simulations [28] even though they value the gene-

ral class of digital resources highly. These survey results and

the results from our focus groups put forward numerous chal-

lenges facing educational digital libraries in informing poten-

tial users about their existence and in convincing these users

to use them to search for helpful pedagogical teaching and

learning materials, both for use with their students and for

their own use.

The results also suggest that there is a gap to be bridged

between offering digital learning materials of value and pro-

viding resources to encourage their use. The recent focus on

Web 2.0 and building social networks such as Flickr, Face-

book or YouTube, is seen as one way to begin to address this

challenge. The hope is that by providing faculty members

and instructors with tools to share their experiences in using

these materials, they will adopt the materials, use them, and

then contribute back to the site that provides access to these

resources. Our results, however, suggest that faculty mem-

bers and instructors, unlike other populations, may be reluc-

tant to engage in this type of social and professional interac-

tion and sharing of learning materials, at least with regards

to their teaching responsibilities. Perhaps most telling in thatregard is that nearly a third (28%) of our survey respon-

dents reported that they did not have a course website or use

online course management tools. Our focus group respon-

dents also offered some insight into this issue when they

responded that while they wanted to find, view and poten-

tially use other faculty members and instructors materials,

they were not as willing to reciprocate by posting or sharing

their own materialsbehaviors that are essential to the Web

2.0 experience. It is not clear that whether this is a lack of

willingness to share, as it is an issue resulting from the private

nature of teaching and fear of criticism in a field (education)

in which they are often not formally trained, and whetherthis might change as more faculty become immersed in the

scholarship of teaching and learning.

The heavy reliance on search engines, particularly Google,

indicates that there should not be a division between search

engines and educational digital libraries. It appears that a

synergistic relationship exists between the two in which the

search engine brings users to the content and the educational

digital library offers high quality content. Each adds value to

the other. This raises the importance of exposure of educa-

tional digital library contents to search engines, and design

of the internal portions of the library to make users arriving

from search engines aware of where they are and offering

these transient visitors a reason to stay. Failure to expose

materials in educational digital libraries to search engines

increases the costs for those libraries to bring in users, and

as users become even more focused on search, increases the

likelihood of their irrelevancy to users because they cannot

be found through a web search.

One potential criticism that might be leveled against this

research is that the majority of respondents seemed to

demonstrate a response bias towards highly valuing digital

resources. However, it is important to keep in mind that the

goal of this research was to examine how individuals use

digital resources in support of teaching and learning. This

being the goal, response bias is considerably less troubling.

More interesting is that these findings suggest a gap between

perceived value and actual use of digital resources. As the

demographics of the faculty shift in the next decade the ques-

tion will be less one of are digital resources valuable? to

one such as what makes the resources and their organization

most valuable to our faculty and our students?

This paper presents an overview of survey findings

where variables, typical to research on faculty members and

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instructors in higher education, such as, institution type or

level of teaching experience, did not directly predict varia-

tions between respondents perceptions and their use of digi-

tal resources. Future examinations of the current data will

look at how demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral

variables may interact to more effectively predict educatio-

nal digital library use. As the broader goal of any research

on digital resource use should focus on how to align positiveperceptions of a digital resource with actual use of a digital

resource, the goal of future work will be to identify leading

indicators of digital resource use and explore how developers

of educational digital libraries can use these to successfully

influence use.

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