The report on the first cycle of the JISC Usage Surveys: Trends in Electronic Information Services (JUSTEIS) covers the period from September 1999 to July 2000.

The aim of the JUSTEIS project was to meet the following objectives specified by JISC as set out in circular 4/99:

Strand A

To undertake a periodic survey of electronic information services (EIS) uptake and use, investigating the quantity and quality of take-up, with a view to bridging the gap between the perceptions and the reality of user behaviour

Strand C

To undertake a survey of resource access provided by individual HEIs in the UK together with purchasing intentions.

A further objective introduced was to create a taxonomy of EIS for both strands.

The methodology, which was a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, comprised:

• a comprehensive literature review for both strands,
• the creation of a taxonomy of EIS,
• a survey of EIS use by students, academic and LIS staff, using critical incident technique and critical success factors, employing structured face-to-face and telephone interviews and e-mail and postal questionnaires (Strand A),
• a survey of HEI LIS Web sites (Strand C), and
• structured telephone interviews of purchasing intentions (Strand C).

The original main survey sample for Strand A comprised 25 HEIs, with one additional pilot HEI, providing a spread of geographical location, size of institution (by number of students), type (Russell, non-Russell, new, old), and department and discipline. Five discipline clusters were considered (Clinical Medicine, Humanities and Arts, Maths and Engineering, Pure and Applied Sciences, Pure and Applied Social Sciences), and the clusters were derived from the RAE 2000 subject grouping lists. For the final analysis, data from 25 institutions (21 of the original 25, the pilot, plus 3 additional sites of the exception plan) were used.

The original census of all HEI Web sites for Strand C was modified as a result of time constraints arising from the complexity of the data collection during the pilot, and a survey of 44 HEI Web sites was undertaken. The survey included sites for all HEIs surveyed in Strand A. Interviews of EIS purchasing intentions (Strand C) were conducted with senior librarians at 10 of the 25 institutions in the Strand A sample used for final analysis.

The methodologies employed were in general successful. The problem of communicating with students and academic staff to facilitate interviews and questionnaire distribution was addressed by a two-month extension to the project (described in the report as the Exception Plan) which tested a new methodology concerned with using academic staff as the primary focus for contact. Some issues concerned with the problems associated with terminology, the differences in the responses between questionnaire and interview, and the sampling framework have been identified and will be rectified for the next cycle.

For future cycles, the team believes that the Strand C survey should go beyond a mere count of links and examine the structure and content layout, together with listings of some areas such as gateways or JISC/CHEST resources, of typical HEI information service Web sites.

The primary use of EIS for students is to satisfy the needs for assignments and background research, and there is an increased use for job searching, projects and revision as students move through undergraduate and postgraduate education. There was a low take up for bibliographic checking throughout all groups.

There appears to be no significant variation in the pattern of EIS use by undergraduate students over their years of study, and little difference between undergraduates and postgraduates.

A major conclusion is the widespread use of e-mail among all user groups. A particular issue raised regularly was the popularity of Web-based systems for personal e-mail which are more flexible and have better availability than HEI systems. The effect of the Internet on information seeking by staff and students is hugely significant; search engines and known sites are the first resort for most academic queries, as well as for many personal domestic queries. There was a wide range of engines used and indications of haphazard searching. The OPAC is used consistently across the student body and by academic staff.

Another major conclusion is that subject gateways are notable only for their lack of mention among students and academic staff, although there is some use among LIS staff. With the exception of LIS staff and academic and research staff, the use of e-journals, Web databases, and BIDS is also low (except in certain discipline clusters). Even for staff the actual incidence is lower than might be expected.

For all EIS, there is little evidence of coherent search strategies used by students. While use of search engines, and e-mail is universally high, there seem some distinct differences among the various disciplines for other EIS which is worthy of further investigation.

The benefits of using EIS appear to focus around saving time, access to resources that cannot easily be located elsewhere was also important, and, possibly, the ease of manipulating the information into project and assignment materials. The problem of plagiarism was identified.

There is considerable evidence that students perceive academic staff as the first point of contact, should they have problems finding EIS required for assignments or project work, or as the primary medium for general guidance. However, guidance is frequently unstructured, and in general, students may remain unaware of resources, or of how best to use them.

Another important finding is that there is uniformly low use of LIS staff and courses that direct students to appropriate EIS.

A statistical account of the range of EIS from the survey of HEI Web sites can be found in Section 7.4. An important aspect of the Web survey is the way in which it help to illuminate the findings of Strand A. Observations revealed that virtually all HEIs provide extensive subject trees as gateways to resources in addition to discrete sections for e-journals, local databases, etc.

Planning for EIS provision was beset by huge uncertainties for the librarians interviewed. Electronic information services are seen as providing benefits for students and staff but planning is constrained by structural changes within the organisation (e.g. convergence, merging of institutions), resource constraints, and the complications of negotiating licensing arrangements. Other significant findings of this study showed a lack of coherent collection development policies and strategies for electronic resources, and the many differences between institutions on charging models for copying and printing.

The lack of use of subject gateways, the low take up of EIS providing only bibliographical information by all groups, and the disappointingly low use of JISC negotiated services and Web databases by students and staff, needs to be addressed.

The increasing preference for Web-based e-mail systems (such as HotMail) over those of the institution, and the concomitant problems in communication suggest that there is a potential role for JISC to encourage HEIs to establish a policy with regard to use of and access to e-mail accounts such as the JANET acceptable use regulations to which all users must agree.

With respect to the influence of staff on the students' use of EIS, the low use made of LIS staff and courses needs to be addressed, and academic staff need to ensure that students are offered structured guidance on EIS with clear expectations for academic work. Although the first cycle survey was not concerned with exploring user education in depth, inevitably there were many valuable insights into this field. LIS staff need to work closely with academic staff in the promotion of EIS, integration of information skills into the curriculum, and in the development of web pages by departments and academic staff where there is an element of information skills teaching and learning involved. The subject of IT skills programmes is one deserving of much more detailed investigation than can be accommodated within the JUSTEIS framework.

JISC needs to provide guidance to HE information services to ensure that the uses of data registered with the Data Protection Registrar do allow for independent evaluators, working on behalf of JISC may be permitted access to student and staff names and e-mails for the purposes of evaluations such as JUSTEIS.

Given the wide range of search engines used and the haphazard nature of much of the searching, some thought might be given to ways of encouraging students to use the Internet more effectively

The benefits to students of downloading and re-using electronic information should be recognised, but this practice also raises issues of plagiarism. HEIs will need to continue to monitor and address this problem.

We are satisfied with what has been achieved to date, in particular the refined methodology which affords a strong foundation for the second cycle which is scheduled to commence in October 2000, and will be completed by the end of March 2001. It is anticipated that the project team will maintain links with the JUBILEE project and any new relevant JISC projects throughout this period.