International Students' Mobile Resource Use in University Libraries

Previous surveys (Nzivo & Chuanfu 2012), (Hughes 2010) and (Lee 2007) quote international students' information needs as different from those of the general student user community. This is exemplified by the many unique challenges international students encounter when accessing information resources. Such challenges include variations in culture, viewpoint, technological barriers, interests, communication barriers and unfamiliarity with information resources and processes. The other challenges are the general inadequate user skills, poor research skills, and inability to ask for help from information service personnel (Lee 2007). The need therefore arises to investigate international students' mobile resource use in university libraries. To attain this objective the work attempts to develop and test a mobile library user needs motivational model based on the expectancy theory of motivation. The work further seeks to ascertain the mobile resource settings in university libraries so as to extract germane knowledge to enable a superior understanding of how international students make use of mobile resources and the notable gaps that should be addressed.