Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:14:14.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Use of Mobile Technologies by Law Students in the Law Library: an Exploratory Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2017

Zaki Abbas ,
Andrew MacFarlane  and
Lyn Robinson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper outlines the first part of a wider, two-part study on the information behaviour of law students. The authors are Zaki Abbas, Andrew MacFarlane and Lyn Robinson. The background and motivation for the study have been described in a previous publication1 which reports the results of interviews with three academic law librarians. Our initial work found that although mobile technologies offered benefits to law students seeking information for their academic studies, there was concern from law librarians that the use of electronic resources via both non-mobile and mobile interfaces resulted in a loss of skills required for information retrieval due to the increasing capabilities of electronic resources’ search interfaces. To gain more insight into how law students were using mobile information resources, and to further understand the advantages and disadvantages of such resources, we extended our study to a wider cohort. This second phase, of our first part study, was conducted over two years (2013–2015). During this time, we carried out interviews with thirteen law librarians and fielded both quantitative and qualitative questionnaires to 36 law students. We also conducted a greater review of literature and examined several existing information-seeking models. We used the results of the research from this phase of study, together with the knowledge from the literature to propose a novel information-seeking behaviour (ISB) model for law students. These findings are reported within this paper. The second part of this research will look at expanding our research cohort to cover a wider audience throughout the UK and use a focus group to validate our proposed model. This will be reported in a following paper.

Keywords

smartphonesmobile technologysurveys
Type
Current Issues
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 180 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Footnotes

1 Abbas, Zaki, MacFarlane, Andrew and Göker, Ayşe, ‘Smartphones for Law Students – Persuasive, Pervasive and Legal: a Research Study’. (2014) 14 Legal Information Management, 174-180. doi:10.1017/S1472669614000413. accessed: 24 September 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Deloitte, ‘The smartphone approaches a perfect peak’ (2016) Mobile Consumer Available: https://www.deloitte.co.uk/mobileuk/perfect-peak/ accessed: 7 February 2017

3 Michael Miller, ‘Market for Feature Phone Apps is Low-tech Goldmine’ (2013) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22390444 accessed: 1 November 2013

4 Chandran, Renju, ‘Pros and cons of Mobile banking’. (2014) 4(10) International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, accessed: 24 February 2015 Google Scholar

5 Aaron Smith, (2012). ‘Part III: The Impact of Mobile Phones on People's Lives’. Pew Research Center http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/11/30/part-iii-the-impact-of-mobile-phones-on-peoples-lives/ accessed: 8 March 2014

6 Benedict Evans, ‘Forget about the mobile internet’ (2015) Available: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/9/1/forget-about-mobile-internet accessed: 7 March 2016

7 John Naughton, ‘Mobile Internet is now just the Internet’ Guardian Online. (2015) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/27/mobile-internet-is-now-just-the-internet-smartphones-apple-android accessed: 7 March 2016

8 Forrester, ‘The Expanding Role of Mobility In The Workplace’ A Custom Technology Adoption Profile (Commissioned by Cisco Systems) (2012). Available: http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/solutions/trends/unified_workspace/docs/Expanding_Role_of_Mobility_in_the_Workplace.pdf accessed: 7 February 2017

9 Sir Edonkumoh Victor Ebiye, ‘Impact of Smartphones & Tablets on the Information Seeking Behaviour of Medical Students And Staff of Niger Delta University Bayelsa State – Nigeria’. (2015) Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), Paper 1288 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1288 accessed: 9 May 2016

10 Mills, Leila A, Knezek, Gerald and Khaddage, Ferial, ‘Information Seeking, Information Sharing, and going mobile: Three bridges to informal learning’. (2014) 32 Computers in Human Behaviour. 324-334 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213003075 accessed: 14 March 2016

11 Chen, H-I, Chen, H-I, Fulton, C., Gleave, H., Theng, Y-L. and Wu, M-M, Use of Mobile Apps in Information Seeking: An International Viewpoint. (2013) 50 Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology., 1–4 doi:10.1002/meet.14505001004 accessed: 16 April 2014 Google Scholar

12 Yong Min Ting Gladys, Thiri May and Muhammad Iqbal Perdana, ‘Critical Inquiry in Information Needs and Behaviours of Students using Smartphone and Tablet for Learning: A Case in Singapore’. Nanyang Technological University, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. (2013) http://www.wkwsci.ntu.edu.sg/programmes/CurrentStudents/Graduate/Forms%20and%20Procedures/Coursework/Documents/D1.%20Proposal%20Samples%2001.pdf accessed: 19 March 2017

13 Farley, H, et al. , How Do Students Use Their Mobile Devices to Support Learning? A Case Study from an Australian Regional University. (2015) 1 Journal of Interactive Media in Education. 14. doi: http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.ar accessed: 15 April 2016Google Scholar

14 Zaki Abbas, ‘#citylis Reflections and Research: Zaki Abbas on “Generations’. (2016) CityLIS News (Library & Information Science at City, University of London). Available: https://blogs.city.ac.uk/citylis/2016/01/29/citylis-reflections-and-research-zaki-abbas-on-generations/#.WSGu2GczVD8 accessed: 29 January 2016

15 Katie Hope, ‘UK Has Never Been More Addicted to Smartphones’ (2016) BBC Online http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37468560 accessed: 9 November 2016

16 Branwen Jeffreys, ‘Can a Smartphone be a Tool for Learning?’ (2015) BBC Online http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34389063 accessed: 9 November 2015

17 Paul Barnwell, ‘Do Smartphones Have a Place in the Classroom?’ (2016) The Atlantic Online. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/do-smartphones-have-a-place-in-the-classroom/480231/ accessed: 3 February 2017

18 Joanna Norton, ‘How students can use mobiles to learn English’ (2014) British Council. https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/teaching-tips-how-students-can-use-mobiles-to-learn-english accessed: 3 March 2016

19 Sari Factor, ‘Ed Tech Is Poised to Go Mainstream’ (2014) Forbes, Education. https://www.forbes.com/sites/schoolboard/2014/02/28/ed-tech-is-poised-to-go-mainstream/#1888d8ee7b39 accessed: 3 March 2016

20 Hossain, Md Emran and Ahmed, SM Zabed, ‘Academic Use of Smartphones by University Students: a Developing Country Perspective’, (2016) 34(4) The Electronic Library, 651-665, doi: 10.1108/EL-07-2015-0112 accessed: 18 February 2017 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Louise-Phillippe Beland, ‘Technology, Distraction & Student Performance’. Centre for Economic Performance. Discussion Paper No 1350. (2015) http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1350.pdf accessed: 9 November 2016

22 Sally Weale, ‘Mobile Phones’ Impact on Lessons Coming Under Scrutiny’. (2015) The Guardian Online. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/13/mobile-phone-impact-school-lessons-scrutiny accessed: 14 June 2016

23 Nick Gibbs, ‘Impact of Smartphones on Behaviour in Lessons to be Reviewed’. (2015) UK Department of Education. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/impact-of-smartphones-on-behaviour-in-lessons-to-be-reviewed accessed 9 November 2016

24 Alosaimi, FD, Alyahya, H., Alshahwan, H., Mahyijari, NA, and Shaik, SA, Smartphone Addiction Among University Students in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (2016) 37(6) Saudi Medical Journal, 675–683. http://doi.org/10.15537/smj.2016.6.14430 accessed: 18 February 2017CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

25 Broder, Andrei, ‘A Taxonomy of Web Search’ (2002) 36(2) ACM SIGIR Forum CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Gloria J Leckie, Karen E Pettigrew, and Christian Sylvain, ‘Modelling the Information Seeking of Professionals: a General Model Derived from Research on Engineers, Health Care Professionals, and Lawyers’ (1996) The Library Quarterly 161–193

27 Godbold, Natalya, ‘Beyond Information Seeking: Towards a General Model of Information Behaviour’ (2006) 11(4) Information Research, paper 269Google Scholar. http://InformationR.net/ir/11-4/paper269.html accessed: 3 August 2013

28 Don Turnbull, ‘Augmenting Information Seeking on the World Wide Web Using Collaborative Filtering Techniques’ (2000) https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~donturn/research/augmentis.html#Heading7 accessed: 14 April May 2014

29 David Elsweiler, Max L. Wilson and Brian Kirkegaard Lunn, ‘Understanding Casual-leisure Information Behaviour’ (2011) http://epub.uni-regensburg.de/22699/1/spinkCIBchp_CR.pdf accessed: 18 May 2014

30 Ashley A Ahlbrand, ‘The ‘Social’ Side of Law Libraries’ Maurer School of Law, Indiana University. (2013) http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1804&context=facpub accessed: 13 April 2015

31 Paul Caron, ‘How Social Media Is Impacting Law Students’. (2016) TaxProf Blog, Pepperdine University, School of Law. http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/how-social-media-is-impacting-law-students.html accessed: 14 January 2017

32 The Mobile Library Catalogue – AirPAC, The University of Bradford http://www.brad.ac.uk/library/my-library/mobile-catalogue/ accessed: 23 March 2017

33 The Squire Law Library, University of Cambridge. https://www.squire.law.cam.ac.uk/) accessed: 14 January 2017

34 David L Driscoll, Afua Appiah-Yeboah, Philip Salib and Douglas J Rupert, ‘Merging Qualitative and Quantitative Data in Mixed Methods Research: How To and Why Not’. (2007) Ecological and Environmental Anthropology, University of Georgia. Paper 18. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/icwdmeea/18 accessed: 5 May 2014

35 Harris, Lois R and Brown, Gavin TL, ‘Mixing Interview and Questionnaire Methods: Practical Problems in Aligning Data’ (2010) 15(1) Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation Google Scholar. http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=15&n=1. accessed: 5 May 2014

36 Kerins, GT, Madden, R, and Fulton, C, ‘Information Seeking and Students Studying for Professional Careers: the Cases of Engineering and Law Students in Ireland’. (2014) 10(1) Information Research accessed: 29 December 2016 Google Scholar

37 Emily Allbon, ‘Is There a Life Outside the Lecture Theatre for Law Students’ (2012) Guardian Online. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/oct/12/law-degree-extracurricular accessed: 9 April 2014

38 N. LaMarca, ‘The Likert Scale: Advantages and Disadvantages’. (2011) Field Research in Organizational Psychology. https://psyc450.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/the-likert-scale-advantages-and-disadvantages/ accessed: 4 May 2015

39 SA McLeod, ‘Likert Scale’. (2008) Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/likert-scale.html accessed: 8 September 2015

40 http://legalresearch.westlaw.co.uk/ accessed: 22 March 2017

41 ‘Lawbore – the Law Students Guide’. (2017) http://lawbore.net/ accessed: 22 March 2017

42 Karen Kaiser, ‘Protecting Respondent Confidentiality in Qualitative Research’ (2010) US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805454/ accessed: 17 June 2014