College and Research Libraries International Students in Acadell1ic Libraries: AU ser Survey Mary Beth Allen A study was undertaken to identify characteristics of the international student population and determine these students' patterns of library use. Analyses were carried out to measure a number of relationships concerning the students' prior use of microcomputers, both in libraries and otherwise, and their current perceived difficulties using libraries. Findings suggest that not all international students arrive in the United States with appropriate information retrieval skills to take advantage of automated bibliographic access systems. Libraries may need to make special efforts to extend instructional services to these students. • ultural diversity on college campuses has increased in re- .cent years. One segment of the multicultural environment of universities is international students. In academic year 1989/1990, there were more than 386,000 international stu- dents enrolled in colleges and universi- ties in the United States, up 5.6% from the previous year. This was the largest increase in seven years.1 Those who work in higher education share an agree- ment to embrace both ~ltural diversity and unity, and to actively remove bar- riers to communication and learning. To ease the transition of international students from their indigenous culture to American culture, most universities operate an office of international student affairs which performs the basic wel- coming and orientation function for stu- dents newly arrived from other countries. Many academic departments also do their share to make new students feel com- fortable and, whether intentionally or not, may serve as a smaller community through which new persons can learn about academic life in the United States and gain a sense of what is expected of them as they make progress toward com- pleting a degree. As a crucial component of serious scholarship at any level, the li- brary is also responsible, not only for making its collections and services availa- ble to the scholarly community and the public but also for teaching newcomers the strategies and processes by which they can independently maneuver through the increasingly complex variety of bib- liographic access systems. BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW Currently, there is a strong interest in higher education (and among public serv- ice librarians) in investigating the need for programs and services targeted at special populations, such as international Mary Beth Allen is Applied Life Studies Librarian and Assistant Professor of Library Administration at the University of Dlinois Library, Urbana, Illinois 61801. This research ivas funded in part by a grant from the University of Illinois Library Research and Publications Committee. The author wishes to acknowledge assistance from the Library Research Center and participants of the 1991 Advanced Research Institute (GSUS/Council on Library Resources), and to express appreciation to James A. Hutchinson of the University of lllinois Department of English. 323 324 College & Research Libraries students. The literature of librarianship contains important contributions that aid our understanding of the difficulties international students face as they begin to use academic libraries in the United States. Excellent overviews of the major writings on the role of bibliographic in- struction and other library services for international students have been reported in Ormondroyd and JacobsonP In addi- tion, an examination of the library's role in the pluralistic campus, including appro- priate administrative initiatives, can be found in Trujillo and Weber as well as in Welch and Lam.4.s The literature of librarianship contains important contributions that aid our understanding of the difficulties that international students face as they begin to use academic libraries in the United States. However, thorough data analysis or "experimental and case studies of the stu- dents' problems are almost nonexistent."6 Recent research projects conducted by Dania Bilal, Kwasi Sarkodie-Mensah, Tmg Ming Lai, and others are examples of thorough data analysis that have reversed this trend and made a significant contribu- tion to the body of literature on inter- national students' use of United States academic libraries.7 Still, most of these studies were completed before the use of microcomputers (such as forOPACs) be- came such an integral part of the basic library research process. To new inter- national students on our campuses, the presence of microcomputers in the li- brary and the necessity of their use to access vast stores of information might constitute one of the major differences between libraries in their home coun- tries and those in the United States. In research involving international students who were in the United States seeking a degree in library and informa- tion science, Silas Marques de Oliveira compared the strengths of program areas in American library and informa- tion science departments with program July1993 areas that students entering United States educational institutions considered im- portant or desirable. One of Oliveira's findings was that the library and infor- mation science program areas that stu- dents considered to be most needed in their home countries were all techno- logical in nature (automation, informa- tion services, information transfer, and networking).8 The obvious implication is that these international students per- ceived the technological advances of American libraries to be of interest, and further that such technology was per- haps unavailable to them at home. Oliveira concludes that "the technologi- cal areas . . . are not only the areas in which most of the [United States] schools consider themselves as having very strong programs, but are also the areas most mentioned as being greatly needed in most of the [foreign] countries represented in this study."9 A further implication is that use of computers in libraries is not prevalent outside the United States. PROBLEM STATEMENT The present study responds to the need for research aimed at determining what place the library holds in the edu- cation process of the diverse population of students on our campuses, which in- cludes international students. It re- sponds to the growing need among academic institutions to assess what per- ceptions international students have of research libraries, how they use libraries during their academic tenure, and what difficulties they encounter in their ef- forts to utilize the libraries' services and collections. More specifically, the study examines international students' use of microcomputers for bibliographic access in libraries, and their use of computers for other purposes (word processing, data- base management, spreadsheets, etc.) out- side libraries. The method chosen for · the study, which will be described in more detail in a subsequent section, will con- sist of a survey of the user population and their use of the library. The informa- tion obtained will be useful in planning and implementing library services for international students, and perhaps for the larger user community. METHODOLOGY The present study was carried out in response to the doctoral research of Kwasi Sarkodie-Mensah. The question- naire used in the current project closely resembles that of Sarkodie-Mensah, which was completed at two New Or- leans, Louisiana, academic libraries; however, neither of those two libraries employed an online catalog at the time, so there is significant interest in com- plementing the previous work with data gathered at a library like that of the Uni- versity of Illinois, where utilizing the li- brary's collections (and resources within the state) is synonymous with independ- ently utilizing a variety of computer- ized information sources. Workstations throughout the main library and in a variety of departmental library locations across campus provide access to an on- line catalog with library holdings and circulation information not only for the Urbana campus but also for over forty other cooperating university, college, public, and other libraries within the state of Illinois. In addition, many of the workstations provide access to local refer- ence files and locally mounted databases. Other workstations only provide access to databases on CD-ROM. The purpose of conducting this user survey was to test statistically the relationship between the difficulty that international students might experience using the University of Illinois library and the degree of their familiarity with computers. The study examines two areas: (1) online catalogs used in libraries, and (2) other uses of microcomputers outside libraries. The -international students were asked: • if the online catalog was new to them • if online catalog workshops were new • whether they found the online catalog difficult to use • if they had used computers in a library before coming to the University of Il- linois • whether they had previously used computers for other purposes, such as word processing, programming, etc. International Students 325 A questionnaire was developed to assess not only computer use but also other primary library use patterns and utilization of collections, services, and facilities by international students. Basic demographic data were also collected. The questionnaire was based in content on the survey instrument used in Sarkodie- Mensah's reseaxclt, although many ques- tions were modified and additional questions, for example, those related to computer use, were included. 10 The sq.r- vey instrument contained thirty-three questions, many of which required or allowed for multiple responses.11 The six-page questionnaire was initially in- tended to be as comprehensive as possible concerning the students' li- brary-use patterns. Therefore, the result- ing data set is quite large and covers a wide range of crucial library use issues. For practical purposes, the present re- port will focus specifically on questions aimed at international students' use of computers. RESEARCH DESIGN The university's Office of Administra- tive Information Systems and Services and Office of International Student Af- fairs assisted in drawing the random sample population by providing access to university directory information for the 3,401 international students who were on the mailing list of the Office of International Student Affairs. During the fall semester of 1988, the survey was mailed to a random sample of 750 inter- national students on the Urbana cam- pus. A total of 395 (52.7%) surveys were returned. A double-coding procedure was undertaken, with the first coding done by the Library Research Center staff, and the second one done by the author for the purpose of gaining familiarity with the data. Survey data were tabulated and an- alyzed using SPSS/PC+. The Office of Admissions and Records reports that international students ac- count for only 1% of the 26,000 under- graduate students on the Urbana campus, but they constitute 25% of the 9,000 graduate students, so the expecta- tion was that the survey population 326 College &: Research Libraries would be primarily graduate students. In response to the question ''What degree are you working on?" some 59.0% of the population reported that they were working toward Ph.D.'s and 29.5 indicated that they were pursuing master's degrees, while only 8.4% were undergraduates. Thus the data gathered in this survey most closely represent pat- terns of graduate students' library use rather than those of the total inter- national student population. FINDINGS Table 1 shows the frequency distribu- tion of users by field of study or major. On the questionnaire, the students were asked their major or area of concentra- tion. Since the variety of responses was so great, the data were collapsed into eight broad categories representing the gamut of majors. The largest number of students, 25.3%, indicated Engineering was their major. Next highest were Agri- culture and Biological Science, with 18.3% of the population. A close third was Commerce and Business Adminis- tration, with 16.4%. Social Sciences rep- resented 13.6% of the population, while Physical Sciences, Education, and Arts and Humanities each represented 10.4% or less of the group. Country of origin is reported in table 2. Again, the data were collapsed be- cause of the wide variety of responses. Seven broad geographic regions repre- sent the collapsed responses. Asia was by far the region with the largest number of respondents, with 54.6% of the dis- tribution. Europe and Oceania each rep- resented 10.7% of the population, while South America represented 8.2%, the Middle East 6.8%, North America 5.2%, and Africa 3.8%. Concerning the gender question, 31.8% of the students responding were female, while 68.2% were male. Another demographic factor examined was the total number of years the international students had already spent in the United States. Some 48.0% of the students who responded to the survey reported one to three years (table 3); 24.7% reported less than one year, while 21.9% said four to July1993 TABLEt FIELD OF STUDY OF RESPONDENTS Field of Studr Frequen~ Valid% Commerce and Business 63 16.4 Engineering 97 25.3 Agriculture and Biology 70 18.3 Social Sciences 52 13.6 Education 35 9.1 Physical Sciences 41 10.7 Arts and Humanities 24 6.3 Non-degree 1 .3 TABLE2 GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION Geographic Area Frequency Valid% Asia 200 54.6 Africa 14 3.8 Europe 39 10.7 Middle East 25 6.8 North America 19 5.2 South America 30 8.2 Oceania 39 10.7 six years. Only 5.4% of the respondents had been in the U.S. six years or longer. Later, this variable will be examined further to determine if students who have been in the United States for several years experience less difficulty using the online catalog than those who have re- cently arrived. One of the first questions the students were asked in the survey was "How often do you use the library?" In re- sponse to this question, 57.4% of the stu- dents said they used the library less than once a day, but at least once a week. Some 24.3% responded that they used the library at least once a day; 15% re- ported their use at less than once a month but at least once a semester, and 3.4% reported less than once a semester. The data indicate that the majority of international students surveyed con- TABLE3 NUMBER OF YEARS SPENT INU.S. No. of Years Frequency Valid% Less than 1 year 97 24.7 1-3 years 188 48.0 4-6 years 86 21.9 6 years or more 21 5.4 sider that the library occupies an impor- tant part of the educational environ- ment. To gain an understanding of the students' general comfort level with li- braries upon arrival in the United States, they were surveyed to see how prepared they were to use American college and university libraries. In response to the question, "How prepared were you to use American college and university li- braries?" 49.9% of the international stu- dents said they were somewhat pre- pared, 28.0% felt very prepared, and 22.1% said they were not at all prepared. The data indicate that over two-thirds of those surveyed might benefit from at least some instruction or orientation to prepare them for using the library. The data gathered in this survey most closely represent patterns of graduate students' library use rather than those of the total international student population. One of the major purposes of the sur- vey was to identify what aspects of li- brary use were new to international students, or what features were different from libraries in their home countries. Table 4 shows the frequency distribution for a number of typical library services or characteristics. For this question on the survey, students could choose as many responses as applied, so that the percen- tages in table 4 represent the percentage of the total sample that responded to each part of the question. Computer database literature searching was chosen . most frequently, with 61.2% of the students re- porting that this aspect of library use was International Students 327 new to them. Some 59.6% said interli- brary loan ("requesting materials not in the library here from another library'') was a new service, and 50.5% said the online catalog was new to them. These three most frequently chosen services all involve use of computers. Online catalog workshops and term paper research counseling also were considered to be relatively new, with 40.1% of the popu- lation responding to each service. The open-stacks characteristic of American libraries has often been reported in the literature as a new concept for foreign stu- dents; however, the data here indicate that only 12.0% of the students surveyed were unfamiliar with finding materials them- selves in the open stacks. Thirty-one per- cent reported that large library collections were new to them, while 28.9% said micro- fiche and microfilm were new. Oassroom instruction in the library was new to 28.1 %, and self-service copy machines were new to 21.6%. Later in the analysis, the newness of the online catalog, ui\famil- iar to approximately half of the inter- national students surveyed, will be compared with other variables. To identify library orientation and in- struction services the students might TABLE4 ASPECTS OF LIBRARIES WHICH WERE NEW TO STUDENTS New Aspect Frequency Valid% Interlibrary loan 229 59.6 Self-service copy machines 83 21.6 Microfiche, microfilm 111 28.9 Online catalog 194 50.5 Online catalog workshops 154 40.1 Computer database lit. search 235 61.2 Open stacks 46 12.0 Large library collections 119 31.0 Classroom instruction in the library 108 28.1 Term paper research counseling 154 40.1 328 College & Research Libraries TABLES SERVICES STUDENTS HAD TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF Orientation/ Instruction Service Frequency Valid% Audiocassette self-guided tour 13 3.4 Tour guided by library personnel 150 38.7 Presentation by library personnel 76 19.6 Research skills instruction in library 34 8.8 Research methods course 50 12.9 Term paper research counseling 35 9.0 None of the above 173 44.6 Other 14 3.6 have used, they were given a list of serv- ices and asked, ''Which of the following have you had since you came to this university?" Their responses are sum- marized in table 5. As in the previous case, the students could choose as many as applied, so the percentages represent the total percentage who responded af- firmatively. The category receiving the highest frequency was "none of the above," perhaps an indication that the students were not aware of the services, especially those which are part of the course-integrated instruction program targeted primarily at undergraduates. Some 38.7% of those surveyed had taken advantage of a tour of the library guided by library personnel; this service is typi- cally offered at the beginning of the fall semester, before the first day of classes. It is an hour-long tour of the physical facilities and provides more information than instruction. Nineteen point six per- cent responded that they had attended a presentation on the library conducted by library personnel, and 12.9% had taken a course in research methods that in- cluded instruction in using library re- sources (but not necessarily conducted by library personnel). Fewer than 10% of the survey population had taken ad van- July1993 tage of services such as term paper re- search counseling/ consultation, research skills instruction sessions in the library, and an audiocassette self-guided tour of the library. These findings indicate that a large proportion of the international student population does not participate in instructional activities commonly offered in academic libraries, yet a siz- able number does attend orientation ac- tivities offered at the beginning of the term. One of the major purposes of the survey was to identify what aspects of library use were new to international students, or what features were different from libraries in their home countries. To focus on the students' perception of the online catalog, they were asked, "Is the online catalog difficult for you to use?" To summarize the frequency dis- tribution of their responses, 12.9% said "yes," 54.4% said "no," 28.8% said "sometimes," and 4.0% answered by writing their own response. The data in- dicate that most of the sample popula- tion say they did not have difficulty using the online catalog. Additional frequency counts indicate that a large majority of the respondents had used computers before, but not for bibliographic access in libraries. Table 6 shows that when asked if they had used computers in a library before coming to the University of Illinois, 69.6% had not and 30.4% had. When asked if they had used computers for other purposes, such TABLE6 PREVIOUS USE OF COMPUTERS Purpose Frequency Valid % In a library Yes 119 30.4 No 273 69.6 For other purposes Yes 333 84.9 No 59 15.1 International Students 329 TABLE7 PREVIOUS USE OF LIBRARY COMPUTERS, BY DIFFICULTY USING ONLINE CATALOG Difficulty Using Online Catalog Yes No Sometimes Previous Use of Ubrary Computers No. % No. % No. % Yes 20 17.7 51 45.1 42 37.2 No 29 11.6 154 61.6 67 26.8 Chi- square= 8.6; df = 2; p < .05; Cramer's V = .154. TABLES PREVIOUS USE OF OTHER COMPUTERS, BY DIFFICULTY USING ONLINE CATALOG Difficulty Using Online Catalog Yes No Sometimes Previous Use of Other Computers No. % No. % No. % Yes 34 11.0 183 59.4 91 29.5 No 15 27.3 22 40.0 18 32.7 Chi- square= 12.4; df = 2; p < .01; Cramer's V = .184. as word processing, database manage- ment, programming, etc., 84.9% had done so and only 15.1% had not. The hypothesis of interest is that inter- national students with prior experience using computers in libraries might not have experienced difficulty using the on- line catalog at the University of Illinois. The null hypothesis being tested is that prior experience using computers makes little difference with regard to difficulty the students experience using the online catalog. For the procedure of hypothesis testing, the null hypothesis can be re- jected if the observed significance level (probability) is less than 0.05. A cross- tabulation was performed to determine the relationship between the respon- dents' difficulty using the online catalog and their prior use of computers in li- braries. Based on the frequency distribu- tions, it was expected that students who had prior experience using any kind of computers in libraries would find the online catalog less difficult to use, per- haps because of familiarity with the con- cept of bibliographic access or with typical searching patterns. Table 7 shows that this was primarily the case. Of those students who had previously used com- puters in libraries, only 17.7% said the online catalog was difficult, while 45.1% said it was not difficult to use. Some 37.2% reported that it was sometimes difficult to use. Because the probability is small (0.013), the null hypothesis can be rejected; the low probability indicates that it is quite unlikely that the two vari- ables are independent in the population. To test the strength of the association, a Cramer's V was conducted; in this statis- tical test, a value of zero corresponds to no association and a value of one to per- fect association. For table 7, the value of Cramer's V is 0.154, indicating a fairly low measure of association. In the·analy- sis represented by table 7, and in all further tables that represent cross-tabu- lations of the "difficulty using the online catalog'' variable, the "other'' response was recorded as missing because it was chosen by less than 5% of the respon- dents (fewer than 19 people). Next, a cross-tabulation was performed to de- termine the relationship between the re- spondents' difficulty using the online catalog and their prior use of computers for other purposes. Table 8 summarizes this relationship. Of the students who had previously used computers for pur- poses other than library information re- trieval, only 11.0% said the online catalog was difficult, while 59.4% said it was not difficult to use. Conversely, of 330 College & Research Libraries July1993 TABLE9 PRIOR USE OF LIBRARY COMPUTERS, BY PREPAREDNESS TO USE UNITED STATES LIBRARIES Preparedness to Use United States Ubraries Very Prepared Somewhat Not at All Prior Use of Library Computers No. % No. % No. % Yes No 46 41.8 49 25.3 22 25.6 64 58.2 145 74.7 64 74.4 Chi- square= 10.2; df = 2; p < .01; Cramer's V = .161. TABLE tO PRIOR USE OF OTHER COMPUTERS, BY PREPAREDNESS TO USE UNITED STATES LIBRARIES Preparedness to Use United States Libraries Very Prepared Somewhat Not at All Prior Use of Other Computers Yes No No. 103 7 Chi- square= 9.16; df = 2; p = .01; Cramer's V = .153. those students who did not have pre- vious experience with computers for other purposes, a larger percentage (27.3%) had difficulty with the online catalog, but a smaller percentage (40.0%) did not have difficulty. Based on a chi-square analy- sis, a statistically significant relationship (p = 0.002) between reported difficulty using the online catalog and previous experience with computers for other purposes exists, but the value of Cramer's Vis 0.185, indicating that the strength of association is fairly low. An analysis of the relationship be- tween prior use of computers in libraries and the degree to which students are prepared to use American libraries is re- ported in table 9. Of students who felt very prepared to use American college and university libraries, 41.8% had used computers in libraries previously but 58.2% had not. Of students who felt somewhat prepared, only 25.3% had used computers in libraries, while 74.7% of this group had not used computers in the library setting. And of those not at all prepared, again, 25.6% had used com- puters in libraries previously, while 74.4% had not. The chi-square computa- % 93.6 6.4 No. 158 36 % 81.4 18.6 No. 70 16 % 81.4 18.6 tion for this relationship is statistically significant, with p = 0.006, so it .:an be said that having used computers in li- braries before and feeling prepared to use American libraries are not indepen- dent. However, the Cramer's V value is 0.162, indicating that the strength of as- sociation is low. Table 10 summarizes the similar, yet much more pronounced, re- lationship between prior use of comput- ers for other purposes and students preparation to use American libraries. Of those students who were very pre- pared, 93.6% had used computers before for other purposes. Of those who were somewhat prepared, 81.4% had used computers for other purposes, but of those not at all prepared, 81.4% had also used computers before for other pur- poses. There does appear to be a statisti- cally significant (with p = 0.010) association between international stu- dents' prior use of computers for other purposes and their feeling prepared to use American libraries. However, the strength of association is low, at 0.153, and because 85.9% of those surveyed had used computers for other purposes, the results may be misleading. International Students 331 TABLEll NEWNESS OF ONLINE CATALOG, BY PREPAREDNESS TO USE UNITED STATES LIBRARIES Preparedness to Use United States Ubraries Very Prepared Somewhat Not at all Newness of Online Catalog No. % No. % No. % Yes 66 34.6 81 42.4 44 23.0 No 42 21.6 111 57.2 41 21.1 Chi- square= 10.1; df = 2; p < .01; Cramer's V = .162 TABLE12 NEWNESS OF ONLINE CATALOG, BY DIFFICULTY USING ONLINE CATALOG Yes Newness of Online Catalog No. Yes 23 No 26 Chi- square= 3.18; df = 2; p > .05; Cramer's V = .093 In analyzing the relationship between the newness of the online catalog to users and their preparation for Ameri- can libraries, table 11 shows that of those who reported that the online catalog was new to them, 57.2% felt only somewhat prepared to use American libraries, while 21.6% felt very prepared and 21.1% felt not at all prepared. The chi- square test revealed this association to be statistically significant, with a probabil- ity of 0.006. Using the Cramer's V test, the strength of association is low at 0.162. Table 12 summarizes the cross-tabula- tion of responses to the questions deal- ing with newness of the online catalog to users and their difficulty with it. As stated earlier, because of small cell size, it was necessary to record the "other" response to the "difficulty" variable as missing for this analysis. Based on a chi- square analysis, the relationship repre- sented in table 12 is not statistically significant since the probability is 0.203 (testing at 0.05). The strength of associa- tion is very low, with the Cramer's V test yielding a value of 0.093. The results in- dicate that of persons who said the on- line catalog was not new to them, only 12.7% had difficulty using it, 34.3% Difficulty Using Online Catalog No Sometimes % No. % No. % 12.7 96 53.0 62 34.3 14.2 110 60.1 47 25.7 sometimes had difficulty, and 53.0% did not have difficulty. Likewise, for those who said the online catalog was new, the percentages for difficulty of use were similar; the figures show that nearly the same number of persons reported yes as reported no to the newness question. Table 13 summarizes the relationship between international students' prep- aration for American libraries and their difficulty using the online catalog. Based on chi-square analysis, the observed sig- nificance level of 0.007 indicates that there is a statistically significant associa- tion between the students' preparation for American college and university li- braries and the difficulty they ex- perience using the online catalog. The Cramer's V test yielded a value of 0.139, which represents a low strength of asso- ciation. Of those who said they did have difficulty using the catalog, only 18.4% felt very prepared to use United· States academic libraries, while 51.0% were only somewhat prepared and 30.6% were not at all prepared. Of those who said they did not have difficulty with the online catalog, 34.8%felt very prepared, 49.5% felt somewhat prepared, but only 15.7%were not at all prepared. The rela- 332 College & Research Libraries July 1993 TABLE13 PREPAREDNESS TO USE UNITED STATES LIBRARIES, BY DIFFICULTY USING ONLINE CATALOG Difficulty Using Online Catalog Preparedness to Use Yes No Sometimes Online Catalog No. % No. % No. % Very prepared 9 18.4 71 34.8 22 20.2 Somewhat prepared 25 51.0 101 49.5 58 53.2 Not at all prepared 15 30.6 32 15.7 29 26.6 Chi- square= 14.04; df = 4; p < .01; Cramer's V = .139 TABLE14 NUMBER OF YEARS IN UNITED STATES BY DIFFICULTY USING ONLINE CATALOG Difficulty Using Online Catalog Yes No Sometimes Number of Years in United States No. % No. % No. % Less than 1 year 19 22.1 33 38.4 34 39.5 1-3 years 23 13.1 106 60.6 46 26.3 4--6 years 6 7.5 53 66.3 21 26.3 6 years or more 0 0 13 65.0 7 35.0 Chi- square= 20.72; df = 6; p < .01; Cramer's V = .169 tionship between the number of years the international students had been in the United States and their difficulty using the online catalog is represented in table 14. Here, the hypothesis of interest is that international students who have been in the United States longer might not experience difficulty using the on- line catalog. The cross-tabulation shows that 38.4% of respondents who had spent less than one year in the United States did not have difficulty with the online catalog, while 22.1% did. However, of those who had spent one to three years in the United States, 60.6% did not experience difficulty and only 13.1% did. Further, of those who had already spent four to six years in the United States, 66.3% did not have diffi- culty and a very small percentage (7.5%) did. The null hypothesis can safely be rejected since the observed significance level is 0.002; yet the strength of the as- sociation is fairly low, with a Cramer's V value of 0.169. IMPLICATIONS It is important for any library to ex- amine the characteristics of its user population and to develop and imple- ment services appropriate to the users' needs. The analysis presented here de- scribes certain characteristics of the in- ternational student population at a large university and illustrates a number of the group's use patterns within the con- text of a large, highly automated library system. The results of the study demon- strate that a basic, but crucial factor to be considered when planning for biblio- graphic instruction activities, is the status of international students. It is only natural to aim course-integrated library instruc- tion programs at undergraduates; but li- . braries must be aware that there are other new students with special needs who may not be taking advantage of the most commonly offered services and instruc- tion activities. If most of the international student population are graduate students, with advanced knowledge of the litera- ture in their fields, (yet perhaps unfamil- iar with technological advances in bibliographic access and the services offered by large United States academic libraries), then a distinct avenue must be created to reach them. This must be dis- tinct from the process aimed at under- graduates. At lliinois the Office of International Student Affairs is more International Students 333 than happy to include the library on its agenda as a major component of the orientation for new international stu- dents on campus. A special opportunity such as this is an excellent way for librari- ans to present the library and themselves in a positive light, to provide an introduc- tion to bibliographic access systems and basic services, and to extend an invitation for further instruction.12 REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Robin WJ.lson, "Foreign Students in U.S. Reach a Record 386,000," Chronicle of Higher Education 37 (November 28, 1990): 1, 13. 2. Joan Ormondroyd, ''The International Student and Course-Integrated Instruction: The Librarian's Perspective," Research Strategies 7 (Fall1989): 148-58. 3. Frances F. Jacooson, "Bibliographic Instruction and International Students," Illinois Libraries 70 (Dec. 1988): 628-33. 4. Roberto G. Trujillo and David C. Weber, "Academic Library Responses to Cultural Diversity: A Position Paper for the 1990s," Journal of Academic Librarianship 17 (July 1991):3, 157--61. 5. Janet E. Welch and Errol Lam, ''The Library and the Pluralistic Campus in the Year 2000: Implications for Administrators," Library Administration and Management 5 (Fall 1991): 4, 212-16. 6. Dania M. Bilal, "Problems of Foreign Students in Using U.S. Libraries and the Difficul- ties of Translating an International Education to Lebanon," in Tallman and Ojiambo, Translating an International Education to a National Environment (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1990), 23. 7. Dania M. Bilal, Library Knowledge of International Students from Developing Countries: A Comparison of Their Perceptions with Those of Reference Librarians (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International,1988); Kwasi Sarkodie-Mensah, Foreign Students and U.S. Academic Libraries (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1989); Ting Ming Lai, A Comparative Study of the Use of Academic Libraries by Under- graduates in the United States and Taiwan (Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1990). 8. Oliveira, Silas Marques de, ''The Compatibility between American Library and Infor- mation Science Programs and Foreign Countries' Needs: An Exploratory Study," in Tallman and Ojiambo, Translating an International Education to a National Environment (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1990), 98. 9. Ibid., 99. 10. Sarkodie-Mensah, Foreign Students and U. S. Academic Libraries. · 11. The author worked closely with the Graduate School of Library and Information Science's Library Research Center to design questions of consistent format for ease of completion by the survey participants and to ensure accurate coding of the data. 12. General library orientation for international students was first organized through the Undergraduate Library at UIUC in 1988. The service successfully continues in coopera- tion with the C. Walter & Gerda B. Mortenson Center for International Library Programs. New from ALA Books Meeting the information demandS ;._, oftoday's library and beyon(l. FISCAL Directory of Fee-Based Research and Information Services Steve Coffman, compiler Approximately 550 listings of fee-based information services providers, including libraries and commercial sources, detail products, services, prices, subject strengths and resources available. Copublished by the Los Angeles Public Library. $65.00pbk. 650p. 1992 ALA Order Code 2161-2-0011 Major U.S. Statistical .. Definitions, Publications, Jean Slemmons Stratford and Juri Stratford Available fro~ i~~~1A.ssociiiti6fi of and R~~~arch Libraries