Results of Library Poll: where do you prefer to start your search?

[[[image-0 medium right]]]In the recent library website poll, ‘if you are researching an assignment which search tool do you usually start with?’ we received well over 2,000 responses.  This is the highest number of poll votes we’ve ever received! 

This feedback is helping Library Services to understand student preferences for search tools. We’ve also been carrying out a series of detailed interviews, exercises and testing to find out how students use existing tools, what their opinion is of the tools and to uncover what they want from library search. This research will heavily influence the type of search tools we offer in the future.

We’ve been developing a prototype search tool which we plan to make more widely available in the Library website new tools section as a beta tool later in the summer, so all OU students and staff can use it.

If you would like to learn more about effective searching, you might like to join one of our regular online library training sessions, or you can part in these short, easy to follow activities about effective searching, on the Being digital website.

We regularly run polls throughout the year on the library website, so keep an eye out for the next one.  Your views are a vital part of the discussions about developing library services for the future and your feedback is always welcome!