College and Research Libraries


JOHN W. LEE and RAYMOND L. READ 

The Graduate Business Student 
and the Library 

REsEARCH ON THE GRADUATE business 
student's knowledge, attitudes toward, 
and use of the library is rare. When one 
considers the alleged importance of the 
library as a source of business informa-
tion and the increasing emphasis on re-
search skills in business, the lack of re-
search on the role of the library in the 
education of the graduate business stu-
dent is surprising.1 

There is general agreement with 
A. M. Cartter's assertion that, "The li-
brary is the heart of the University; no 
other single nonhuman factor is as 
closely related to the quality of gradu-
ate education."2 While there seems to be 
a philosophical consensus that this 
premise is a necessary and desirable 
goal, in fact, casual observation tends 
to make this statement seem a mere 
platitude. Certainly, any assumption 
concerning the actual role of the library 
in the education of graduate business 
students is subject to much closer exam-
ination. 

The basic objective of this research 
was to examine the aforementioned sit-
uation. It was as an exploration into an 
area where research was long overdue. 
The research had three purposes: ( 1 ) 

Drs. Lee and Read are associate and as-
sistant professors of management at the 
Florida State University, Tallahassee. 

The critical comments and suggestions 
of Dr. Louis Shores are gratefully acknowl-
edged by the authors. 

to examine the graduate business stu-
dent's knowledge of the library, ( 2) to 
explore the graduate business student's 
attitude toward the library, and ( 3) to 
secure some indication of his use of the 
library. 

METHODOLOGY AND SUBJECTS 

The data for this study were obtained 
by administering a twenty-two item 
questionnaire to three graduate business 
classes at a large accredited southeastern 
business school. 0 Seventy-nine graduate 
business students returned the two part 
questionnaire which took approximately 
twenty minutes to complete. 

The convenience sample consisted of 
fifty management majors, fourteen 
marketing majors, eight finance majors, 
six accounting majors, and one quantita-
tive methods major. Three respondents 
were DBA candidates. 

Eight of the questions utilized a 
"Likert-type" format consisting of five 
responses (strongly agree, agree, unde-
cided, disagree, strongly disagree; or 
very poor, poor, average, good, excel-
lent). Of the remaining questions, three 
required a simple "yes" or "no" response 
while eight required the naming of spe-
cific library sources that the student 
would consult to obtain specified in-
formation. Three questions were open-
ended in nature seeking attitudes and 
opinions. 

0 A copy of the questionnaire will be provid-
ed by the authors on request. 

I 403 



404 I College & Research Libraries • September 1972 

STUDENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE BusiNESS 

LIBRARY-A SELF APPRAISAL 

The first part of the questionnaire re-
quired the graduate business student to 
appraise his knowledge of the library 
along with the knowledge of his fellow 
graduate students and college students 
in general. Additionally, two questions 
were included to ascertain where and 
how the respondent acquired his knowl-
edge of the library. 

Sixty-five percent of the respondents 
felt that college students do not know 
how to use the library effectively. Of the 
remainder, 21 percent were undecided 
while 13 percent thought that students 
knew how to use library resources effec-
tively. 

When the respondents were asked to 
assess the ability of graduate business 
students to utilize the library, 48 percent 
held the view that graduate business 
students could not utilize the library 
well. The same 13 percent who thought 
college students in general could effec-
tively utilize the library were the same 
respondents who felt graduate business 
students knew how to use the library; 
the remainder were unsure. 

Students were then given an opportu-
nity to rate their own knowledge of the 
library prior to actually being tested for 
competency. Nine percent rated their 
knowledge as very poor, 22 percent rated 
their knowledge poor, and 43 percent 
of the graduate students rated their 
knowledge as average. Only 25 percent 
of the respondents rated their knowl-
edge good or excellent. While these rat-
ings do not seem extraordinarily high, 
test results proved these ratings to be 
grossly overestimated. 

Finally, inquiries pertaining to where 
or how the student acquired his knowl-
edge of the library revealed that none 
of the students had ever received any 
formal classroom instruction on use of 
the library. A significant 82 percent of 
the respondents reported that they had 
done no independent reading to im-

prove their knowledge of how to use 'the 
library. 

TESTED KNOWLEDGE OF THE 

BusiNEss LIBRARY 

After the student had completed the 
first part of the questionnaire covering 
library usage, knowledge ratings, and at-
titudes, he was given a fill-in question-
naire (which consisted of six specific 
questions) requesting him to identify 
specific sources (indices, abstracts, or 
publications) which he would consult 
to obtain certain information. Topics 
for which the student was requested to 
list library sources were: the top 100 in-
dustrial firms in the United States in 
1970; a review of TofHer's Future 
Shock; disposable personal income; and 
so forth. One question asked for a list-
ing of the indices and/ or abstracts in 
the library that the student felt compe-
tent to use. Another important question 
required the student to outline the exact 
research strategy he would develop to 
compile an annotated bibliography on 
the subject of management develop-
ment. 

On the first set of questions, 25 per-
cent of the students were unable to in-
dicate a single suitable source for ob-
taining information on any of the six 
subjects given. Only 37 percent of the 
respondents were able to answer correct-
ly more than one question; 48 percent 
of the graduate students could not list 
one index or abstract that they knew 
how to use. Only 11 percent of the re-
spondents were able to list more than 
two sources that they knew how to use. 

In scoring the answers to the question 
requiring the student to outline the 
exact strategy for the annotated bibli-
ography, grades on a scale of 0 to 5 were 
subjectively assigned depending upon 
the adequacy of the student's research 
procedure. The results showed that 47 
percent of the graduate students scored 
0; another 47 percent scored 1; and the 
remaining 6 percent scored 2. No onere-



Business Student and the Library I 405 

ceived a score higher than 2. The dismal 
performance of the respondents on this 
part of the test was at first attributed to 
unrealistic expectations on the part of 
the graders. A subsequent review of the 
results, however, did not alter the origi-
nal ratings. Without exception, these 
graduate business students did not know 
how to compile an adequate bibliogra-
phy on such a mundane topic as man-
agement development. 

SELF RATING OF KNOWLEDGE-

A REAPPRAISAL 

Immediately after the first testing of 
the respondent's knowledge of the li-
brary, the students were asked to rate 
their knowledge of the library a second 
time. The purpose of this rerating was 
to determine what effects, if any, the 
test for competency had had upon the 
student's analysis of his proficiency in 
using the library. Significantly, 55 per-
cent of the students now rated their 
knowledge ·as poor or very poor (an in-
crease from 31 percent for the same 
question asked prior to the actual test-
ing for knowledge), 30 percent rated 
their knowledge average (a decrease 
from 43 percent), and only 15 percent 
maintained a self-appraisal of good or 
excellent (a decrease from 25 percent). 

When one considers that 42 percent 
of the students had actually lowered 
their self-appraisal by either one or 
more levels of proficiency, it is not dif-
ficult to ascertain the effect that the stu-
dent's own performance on the first test 
had on his view of his own skills. More-
over, not one respondent raised his self-
appraisal after completing both parts 
of the questionnaire. Obviously the stu-
dents had not impressed themselves with 
their display of knowledge. 

However, even in light of the more 
realistic reappraisal, the students' view 
of their library skills remained consid-
erably greater than could be justified 
when test results were analyzed. This 
may in part be due to the fact that the 

test results were not disclosed prior to 
the rerating. Their poor performance 
on test questions which required a dis-
play of library knowledge, plus their 
tendency to lower their own ratings af-
ter attempting to answer relatively sim-
ple questions, is ample testimony to 
both their lack of proficiency and, in 
some cases, their unawareness of the ex-
tent of their deficiencies. 

LmRARY USAGE AND CoNFIDEN CE 

Students were asked to estimate the 
number of times they made use of the 
library in an average month. Approxi-
mately 67 percent of the students re-
ported that they used the library six or 
more times a month, while 18 percent 
indicated that they used the library be-
tween one and five times a month. A 
surprising 15 percent of the students 
noted that they did not use the library 
at all. 

A reexamination of the · open-ended 
questions revealed that the library was 
used in part as a place to study br to so-
cialize between classes. The purposes of 
library use were not obtained b y the in-
strument, but follow-up interviews with 
eight of the students who had indicated 
they used the, library six or more times 
a month found that they made exten-
sive use of the library to ·study, not to 
do research. The interviews with the stu-
dents seemed to s4pport Lyle's observa-
tion that students still regard libraries 
as places for studying their own t exts, 
for meeting friends , or for lounging.3 

· It was particularly significant to note 
that 53 percent of the students surveyed 
had never used the library for research 
other than class assignments. When one 
considers the current emphasis on inde-
pendent study and individualized in-
struction, the absence of library utiliza-
tion, except when required, raises seri-
ous questions about the capacity of the 
graduate business student to engage in 
independent study. Conversely, ques-
tions must be raised about the extent to 



406 f College & Research Libraries • September 1972 

which the library is integrated into the 
business curriculum. 

Student opinions of their library 
knowledge were correlated with their 
usage. The ratings presented a consist-
ent pattern, in that high usage was CO!-
related with high self-ratings of library 
knowledge and low library knowledge 
ratings with low usage. 

Another area studied was perceived 
library knowledge and its relationship 
to the students' completion of a gradu-
ate business research course. This course 
requires a considerable amount of li-
brary research. Correlations were done 
between two groups of students: those 
who had previously taken the research 
methods course and those who had not. 
The results showed that among those 
who had taken the research course, 67 
percent rated their knowledge as good 
to excellent while 33 percent rated their 
knowledge as poor to very poor. Among 
those who had not taken the research 
course, only 34 percent rated their 
knowledge as good to excellent, while 
66 percent rated their knowledge as 
poor to very poor. 

All of the students, irrespective of 
their length in the program, who had 
not taken the research course, rated 
their knowledge of the library, poor or 
very poor. This analysis suggested that 
a high degree of confidence in use of 
the business library was instilled in stu-
dents who had completed the research 
methods course. It also presumed that 
length of time in the program, by it-
self, was not an important variable. Un-
fortunately, additional analysis of the 
questionnaire results revealed that the 
confidence instilled by the research 
methods course was not justified. In oth-
er words .the test results indicated that 
students having completed the research 
course were not more knowledgeable 
than the students who had not taken the 
course. Thus, confidence in one's ability 
to use the library is not necessarily an 
indication of one's real ability. 

STUDENT AmTUDES TowARD 
THE LIBRARY 

Student attitudes toward the business 
library were ascertained through three 
questions. The first question was open-
ended requiring the respondents to 
name the first thing that came to mind 
when he thought of the business li-
brary. 

Comments to this open-ended ques-
tion were varied. The responses fell in-
to these categories: physical conditions, 
utilization of facilities, and general 
statements concerning the library. Ap-
proximately one-third of the responses 
to ·this question were negative in that 
they focused upon facility problems or 
the difficulties that students experienced 
in using the library. 

Student opinions were solicited on the 
role the business library presently plays 
in the education of graduate business 
students. Seventy-five percent of the stu-
dents strongly agreed or agreed with the 
statement that the library plays an im-
portant role while 9 percent were unde-
cided as to the role of the library. The 
business library was felt to be capable 
of playing an important role in the edu-
cation of graduate business students by 
90 percent of the students. An analysis 
of the strongly agree responses for both 
questions found a substantial change 
of approximately 25 percent. It would 
seem reasonable to conclude that the 

. graduate business student recognizes not 
only the importance of the library to 
his program of study, but the potential-
ly greater role that it could and should 
play. 

CONCLUSIONS 

A recent study of undergraduate busi-
ness students found their knowledge of 
the library to be quite deficient.4 It can 
be seen from the results of this s·tudy 
that the same conclusion is warranted 
for the graduate students. The graduate 
business student is, by his own admis-
sion, ill-prepared to use the library ef-
fectively in his course of study. Test re-



Business Student and the Library I 407 

suits were consistent in that the scores 
confirmed the students' perceived lack 
of knowledge. In fact, test results indi-
cated that a majority of students rated 
their knowledge higher than warranted. 
While the graduate business student 
may be better prepared to use the li-
brary than the undergraduate business 
student, his level of knowledge is still 
inadequate. This is particularly disturb-
ing since an executive's knowledge of 
the literature of his field and his skill 
in its use are important factors deter-
mining his professional advancement 
and competence. 

There exists a clear need to review the 
role of the library in the formal educa-
tion of graduate business students. It is 
ironic that such a gap exists between the 
potential role of the library and its 
present role. The present '~sink-or-swim" 
approach to developing library skills is 
a proven unsatisfactory method. Stu-
dents do not acquire library knowledge 
by "osmosis" nor by guided tours. It is 
also somewhat disheartening to note 
that an overwhelming majority of the 
graduate students do not take the time 

to build their library skills through in-
dependent study. 

The negative attitude evidenced by 
one-third of the students is not an in-
consistent finding, considering the diffi-
culties they face in utilizing the re-
sources of the library. It is quite pos-
sible that this negative attitude would 
not exist if proper instruction in the use 
of library resources could be provided 
early in the graduate business program. 
However, it may also be possible that, 
at present, most members of business 
faculties are themselves too deficient in 
library skills to answer the challenge. 

REFERENCES 

1. John Bruner and John W. Lee, "Student 
Knowledge, Attitude and Use of the Busi-
ness Library," The Research Committee 
Working Paper No. 19, Data Analysis Cen-
ter, The Florida State University. 

2. Allan M. Cartter, An Assessment of Quality 
in Graduate Education (Washington, D.C.: 
American Council on Education, 1966) , p. 
114. 

3. Guy R. Lyle, The President, the Professor 
and the College Library (New York: H. W. 
Wilson Co., 1963). 

4. Bruner, "Student Knowledge, Attitude ... ,"