A Content Analysis of Help and Instruction via the Academic Library Home Page

by Barry, M.

This study reports the results of a content analysis conducted to determine how academic libraries use the Web to provide help or deliver instruction to users. The researcher used conceptual analysis to determine the number and percent of links provided and relational analysis to examine the categorization and placement of help or instruction links on the Web page and to compare them to descriptions and definitions of reference service, bibliographic instruction, online help and online instruction. The researcher concluded that librarians, overall, categorized the links observed as help and organized a majority of the links, 102 out of 156, on the library home page.