The first edition of the CLIP Note "User Surveys in College Libraries" in 1995 proved to be a popular publication, as libraries strive to improve their services to their user communities by attempting to discover their needs and expectations. In the past ten years, the use of surveys in libraries has evolved with the development of online tools and services, so it was deemed appropriate to provide a second edition of this publication. Using the CLIP Notes guidelines, the compilers developed a survey based on that found in the 1995 User Surveys in College Libraries to allow for an historical comparison. A first draft of the survey was tested on a sample group, and the survey was edited based on feedback. The compilers used the online tool SurveyMonkey.com to manage the survey and, in May 2006, invited librarians representing 251 libraries to respond, garnering a response rate of 53 per cent.

The study presents more than 170 tables of data describing how American college students use their library workstations, how long they wait for them, how they view their availability and whether they prefer Macs or PC's. The report also covers use of laptops in the college library, both students own and those provided by the college library. Other issues covered include use of the library's online catalog and out of library access to the library home page. The data in the report is based on a representative sample of more than 400 full time college students in the United States. Data is broken out by 16 criteria including gender, grade point average, major field of study, income level of students and type, size of college, and mean SAT acceptance score of colleges, among other variables.

Survey of academic libraries, chiefly in the United States and Canada, on their use of classroom response systems (clickers); whiteboards, tablets, and other presentation aids; internet technologies such as instant messaging, blogs, wikis, podcasting, photo sharing, online simulations/tutorials, virtual classroom/reality software, virtual reference software, and course management systems; instructional budgets; instructional computer labs; and instructional furniture.

. The report presents data from a survey of 400+ American college students about how they go about doing research in their college libraries. The 150+ page report gives extensive data on student use of major search engines, wikipedia, library databases, book collections and other library resources. The study also gives detailed information on how their professors advise them to use the library, and how comfortable they feel about their research skills and how helpful librarians have been in helping them in their research. Data is broken out by more than 16 criteria including gender, income level, type and size of college, mean SAT acceptance score of the college, and many other variables. Just a few of the report¡¦s many findings are that: ¿öOnly about 47% of students are sure that they have ever been required to turn in a research paper exceeding 10 double spaced typed pages in length for any of their classes.¿öMore than 86% of students say that they understand the concept of plagiarism ¡§well¡ ̈ or ¡§very well¡ ̈. ¿ö64% of students sampled say that they know how to contact a librarian online.¿ö55.2% of the students in the sample had not asked for help from a librarian within the past year.¿öNearly 29% of students say that Google, Yahoo and other major search engine searches were the most important information source for their last research assignment.¿öMore than 9% of information needed for research papers was sourced from Wikipedia or other wickis.¿öThe higher the grade point average the less information for research papers was obtained from search engines such as Google or Yahoo.The study is available directly from Primary Research Group or from major book distributors. The price is $80.00 for print and PDF versions; site licenses are also available. For further information contact Primary Research Group at 212-736-2316 or visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.