From Student to Scholar: The Academic Library and Social Sciences PhD Students’ Transformation

Although research concerning the information-seeking behavior of academic library users is abundant, few studies have focused specifically on PhD students. This oversight has had an impact on librarians’ ability to effectively market services such as information literacy instruction and research assistance to doctoral students. In order to investigate both their information-seeking processes and the affective dimensions of their research, the authors conducted three focus groups with 24 social sciences doctoral students and then corroborated their findings with a survey of academic librarians. The goal of this project is to provide academic librarians with insight about the process of PhD education and to suggest possible points of intervention for improving communication with and services to this group.