Pam McKinney live-blogging from day 3 of the ECIL conference. Pavla Vizváry from Masaryk University, Czech Republic spoke about her research to understand the information literacy practices of Czech doctoral students. Students are mostly aged between 25 and 37, the graduation rate is only about 40%, which is due to a range of complex factors and the challenges of PhD study. For example, they have limited finances, often have to work alongside their study and have a negative work-life balance, which affects family life. They don't get a lot of training in academic skills, information gathering and information literacy generally. However, they have high internal motivation to pursue PhD study and are researching a topic they are interested in.
In the research, Pavla wanted to understand how Czech doctoral students solve information issues in their academic activities. She worked with 9 volunteer students from 3 faculties. They had to complete diaries in one semester and then a 90-120-minute follow-up interview.
PhD students built information pathways through problem-solving, but these became rigid over time. They mostly solved their information problems themselves, and even if they had failures, they mostly didn't seek help and tried to solve their problems themselves. A key finding is that Doctoral students need support at the beginning of their studies. Students were aware of their weaknesses, but a lack of time meant they didn't work to address these weaknesses. They need "just-in-time" help without barriers from librarians, which is neutral, where librarians don't push their own agenda. The library is important for PhD students, and support needs to feature personal support from a librarian. Supervisors were not always the primary source for any information issues experienced by students, but there was a lot of peer support from other students, particularly with "small" questions, e.g. how to cite a conference. They had a lot of trust in the academic community. They had some questionable approaches to the ethical use of information, but they did mature over time. Openness emerged as a key value, openness of knowledge, open science, and the transparency and re-use of information. Students mostly worked with electronic information; they use Google Scholar, proven databases and proven Journals. They didn't seem to have a good conception of the use of the library catalogue and the physical resources that are available in the library. They are cautious users of AI. They liked citation generators, rather than reference management tools.
Pavla created 3 PhD "personas", the lifelong academic, the awakening searcher and the professional searcher based on the research. In conclusion, doctoral students need IL education that meets them where they are, in the moment of need, not in the classroom.
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