Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Running Head: FACULTY TRANSITION TO USE ONLINE CATALOGS

Factors Influencing the Transition to Use of Online Catalogs By Higher Education Faculty
ETR 522
Adel Qahmash
Russell O'Brien

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Review of the Literature ................................................................................................................. 1
Research Question .......................................................................................................................... 3
Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 4
Results ............................................................................................................................................. 4
Discussion and Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 9
Resources ...................................................................................................................................... 11

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Introduction
Academic libraries have made a considerable investment in electronic information
resources, and electronic archiving because of their potential to facilitate access to scholarly
research among both faculty and students (Starkweather & Wallin, 1999). In so doing, it is
imperative that library and university administrators have a clear understanding of faculty
attitudes and behaviors toward adopting these resources (Adams & Bonk, 1995).
To best serve faculty information requirements, administrators need to gauge how these
needs are presently changing, and what they may be in the future (Schonfield & Guthrie, 2007).
In 2006 Ithaka (http://www.Ithaka.org) hired an outside research firm, Odyssey, to conduct
surveys about attitudes and perceptions of academic librarians specializing in collection
development as well as faculty to gather information about their transition to an increasingly
electronic environment (Schonfeld & Guthrie, 2007). The Ithaka survey consists of almost 197
items that cover a wide range of factors related to the use of electronic information resources
among faculty. These factors include their use of e-books, electronic scholarly resources, and
frequency of accessing the Internet, personal computers and emails. A multitude of other factors
are also considered such as ease of use, age and gender.

Review of the Literature

According to the literature, such factors play a major role in influencing attitudes and
perceptions toward these resources (Adams & Bonk, 1995; Abels, Liebscher & Denman,
1997;Clark & Wallin, 1999; Lehmann & Renfro, 1991; Vander Meer, Poole & Van Valey,
1996). Due to the large amount of survey data available, for the purposes of this paper, we chose

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

to restrict our examination to two factors: frequency of accessing the internet and frequency of
using the personal computer to predict the transition to online catalog use among university
faculty.
The review of the literature also posited that electronic information resources including
digital library, online journals and digital repositories can facilitate the information seeking
process for faculty to gain a deeper understanding of a certain discipline (Sandoval & Reiser,
2003; Borgman, Smart, Millwood, Finley, Champeny, Gilliland & Leazer, 2005). With these
electronic resources, faculty have greater opportunities to share scholarly research papers with
their colleagues, to access a wide range of scientific materials to support their research, and
promote their quest for knowledge (Borgman et al., 2005).
In general, the introduction of new technologies into a certain community may face
resistance among individuals due to internal or external factors (Lehmann & Renfro, 1991). In
regard to the transition to online catalog use among faculty, the literature states the frequency of
accessing the internet as well as using the personal computer play a major role in influencing
university faculty attitudes and perceptions toward these electronic resources (Adams & Bonk,
1995; Abels, Liebscher & Denman, 1996;Clark & Wallin, 1999; Lehmann & Renfro, 1991;
Vander Meer et al., 1996). In the case of faculty in small universities, which have more limited
resources, and are often hampered by geographic isolation, interactive access to remote databases
should be of great importance to them (Abels, Liebscher & Denman, 1996).
Adams and Bonk (1995) conducted a quantitative survey among faculty to examine
factors related to their use of electronic information sources across all disciplines on four
university campuses. A total of 3,713 questionnaires were distributed, 1,007 of which were
retrieved. The statistical results indicated that the most common obstacle to using electronic

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

information resources among faculty is a lack of knowledge about what is available followed by
computer network access. In a similar study, Clark and Wallin (1999), explored the level of
adoption of electronic resources among faculty at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV).
This qualitative research study identified factors influencing the transition to use of electronic
resources among faculty using interviews and focus groups to collect data from participants. The
findings revealed several of these factors. Access to the Internet was the most significant factor
noted in both interviews and focus groups. The faculty members also stated that their minimal
Internet usage decreased their expectations of digital library resources (Clark & Wallin, 1999).
Therefore, the above studies confirm it is evident that Internet access is a significant factor for
use of electronic information sources among faculty.
Another factor that has been examined is the frequency of computer use. Vander Meer,
Poole, and Van Valey (1996) studied factors related to the use of online library databases. The
study confirmed that the frequency of computer use positively collaborated with that of online
information resources. Conversely, faculty who do not use computers on a regular basis do not
access electronic resources regularly. Additionally, Fiscella and Proctor (1995) found that use of
locally loaded databases was associated with having a campus computer account.

Research Question
The research question, which guided this study, is:
Can the transition to online catalogs among faculty be predicted by the following variables: the
frequency of Internet use and the frequency of personal computer use?

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Methodology
The data set for this study came from an outside research firm, Odyssey. Odyssey, based
in San Francisco, conducted a descriptive survey study to explore faculty attitudes and
perceptions toward the digital library. The survey consists of 197 variables, however, in this
study we used only three: two were predictor variables: 1) the frequency of internet use 2) the
frequency of personal computer use, and the dependent variable was 3) transition to use online
catalog. Figure 1 shows the research model for this study.

Figure 1:

catalog. The following figure shows the research model for the study.

The participants of the study are faculty members at United States colleges and
universities. A total of 44,218 participants were selected from a list of faculty members across
universities in the United States. Only 9.4% (N = 4134) of the selected participants responded to
the survey. Three regression analyses were used to best answer the research question: multiple
regression, ordinal regression and logistic regression.

Results
Data Screening: Prior to the regression analysis, a data screening was conducted to check
the following: missing values, outliers and variable skewness. The descriptive statistics results

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

yielded that the dependent variable (transition to online catalog) has the largest percentage of
missing values (53.7%) among the three variables examined. Regarding, the missing cases, we
coded them to make sure that SPSS treats them as missing values. Table 1 shows the amount of
missing values among the variables.

Table 1: Results of Descriptive Statistics

Regarding the outliers, the SPSS extreme value table shows that all three variables have
outliers. The dependent variable has 10 cases, the first predictor (internet use) has 12 cases and
the second predictor has 10 cases. For skewness, all three variables were negatively skewed as
shown in figure 2.

Figure 2:

Histograms For skewness of the three variables

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Multiple regression analysis: based on the data screening, the dependent variable
(transition to online catalog) was negatively skewed, which might affect the multiple regression
results. In this case, we applied the inverse variable technique on the dependent variable and then
applied the multiple regression analysis. The results from the multiple regression analysis
showed that the overall model is statistically significant p value (0.001) < 0.5 (See table 3). The
coefficient table indicates that the two predictors were statistically significant as shown in table
4.
Table 3: Regression Model

Table 4: Regression coefficient

The multiple regression assumption of multicollinearity was met. The VIF < 10 and
Tolerance > .10. However, the assumption of normality of residuals was violated due to the
positive skewness as shown in figure 2. Because of this, we applied a transformation variable
approach using both SQRT and Log (10) to see if it normalized the skewness. The resulting
histogram showed that not much changed, as figure 3 shows. Since the types of transformations
did not fix the normality of residuals, we were forced to consider other regression methods.

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Therefore, we decided to convert the dependent variable from a continuous to categorical format
and run both ordinal and logistic regression tests. We coded the DV as follows: 8 or lower ("not
at all" to "well") = 0 and 9 or 10 ("extremely well")=1 for the predictor values.

Figure 3: Histograms of standardized residuals for three variables.

Ordinal regression: The SPSS results showed the model with predictors fits significantly
(p < 0.001) better than the intercept only model, as shown in table 5. However, the ordinal
regression assumption of test of parallel lines was violated because the p value was (0.001) < 0.5
as shown in table 6.
Table 5: Model Fit

Table 6: Results of Test of Parallel Lines

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

So, we were forced to use the only method left available to us, which is logistic
regression.
Logistic regression: The SPSS results showed the model with the predictors fits
significantly better than the intercept-only (best guess) model (p < .001) as shown in table 7.
Also it indicates that 995 (61.1%) faculty perceived the transition to use online catalog as
extremely beneficial as shown in table 8. However, the Hosmer and Lemeshow test showed that
the model does not fit the data because p = .034 < .05, as shown in table 9.
Table 7: Results of Logistic Regression Model

Table 8: Classification Table

Regarding the two predictors, they were both found to be statistically significant. The
frequency of Internet use is statistically significant p value (0.001) < 0.5 and the frequency of

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

computer use is statistically significant p value (0.31) < 0.5 as shown in table 10. Accordingly,
our SPSS results show that the odds ratio tells us that each unit increase in computer use
increases the odds of faculty to use electronic information resources by 1.352 times. Also, it
indicates that each unit increase in Internet use increases the odds to use electronic information
resources by 0.516 times.
Table 10: Significant Predictors

Discussion and Conclusion

Overall, this study found that the transition to use of electronic information resources
among faculty could be predicted by the frequency of Internet use as well as the frequency of
computer use, which our review of the literature confirmed (Adams & Bonk, 1995; Vander Meer
et al., 1996; Fiscella & Proctor, 1995; Clark & Wallin, 1999). According to the logistic
regression results, the strongest predictor was the frequency of Internet use with a p value
(0.001) < 0.5. The second predictor, the frequency of computer use, was not as strong as the first
predictor, but was still significant with a p value (0.031) < 0.5.
As beginning researchers we encountered obstacles in doing this study, and learned much
from the alternative methods of statistical analyses conducted when assumptions were violated.
We persisted in trying different avenues of analysis, and were eventually helped by our
classmates and instructor to find a method that would yield success. This helped us to understand
that educational statistics requires trial and error to find valid interpretations of the data. In
hindsight, we also were not experienced enough with statistical analysis to deal with a survey

Faculty transition to use online catalogs

which produced so many variables (197), yielding an abundance of missing data (53%). We
would have been better off choosing our data set with greater initial analysis and care, and not
biting off more than we could chew.

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Faculty transition to use online catalogs

Resources

Adams, J., & Bonk, S. (1995). Electronic information technologies and resources: Use by
university faculty and faculty preferences for related library services. College & Research
Libraries, 56(2), 119-131.
Borgman, C., Smart, L., Millwood, K., Finley, J., Champeny, L., Gilliland, A., & Leazer, G.
(2005). Comparing faculty information seeking in teaching and research: Implications for
the design of digital libraries. Journal of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology, 56(6), 636-657.
Fiscella, J. B., & Proctor, E. (1995). An approach to assessing faculty use of locally loaded
Databases. College & Research Libraries, 56(5), 446-458.
Lehmann, S., & Renfro, P. (1991). Humanists and electronic information services: Acceptance
and resistance. College & Research Libraries, 52(5), 409-413.
Liebscher, P., Abels, E., & Denman, D. (1997). Factors that influence the use of electronic
networks by science and engineering faculty at small institutions. Part II. Preliminary use
indicators. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(6), 496-507.
Sandoval, W.A., & Reiser, B.J. (2003). Explanation-driven inquiry: Integrating conceptual and
epistemic supports for science inquiry. Science Education, 87, 129.
Schonfeld, R., and Guthrie, K (2008). Ithaka 2006 Survey of US Academic Librarian Attitudes
and Behaviors. ICPSR22701-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for
Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-11-21.
http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR22701.v2
Schonfeld, R. C., & Guthrie, K. M. (2007). The changing information services needs of faculty.
Educause Review, 42(4), 8-9.
Starkweather, W., & Wallin, C. (1999). Faculty response to library technology: Insights on
attitudes. Library Trends, 47(4), 640-668.
Vander Meer, P., Poole, H., & Van Valey, T. (1996). The connection between library use and
use of campus computer applications. The Electronic Library, 14(4), 339-345.