Students Use More Books after Library Instruction: An Analysis of Undergraduate Paper Citations

Rachel Cooke is Librarian for Languages & Literature, Fine & Performing Arts, and History, and Danielle Rosenthal is Science Librarian, both at Florida Gulf Coast University; e-mail: [email protected], drosenth@ fgcu.edu. In fall 2008, students from first-year Composition I and upper-level classes at Florida Gulf Coast University participated in a citation analysis study. The citation pages of their research papers revealed that the students used more books, more types of sources, and more overall sources when a librarian provided instruction. When these results were compared to those produced by students in upper-level classes (all of whom received instruction), it was discovered that, as the class level increased, the number of citations and the percentage of scholarly citations generally increased and there was a high preference for books from all disciplines, especially history.