Why do college students use public libraries?

The Spring 2004 issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly contains an interesting article by U. of Oklahoma Engineering Librarian Karen Antell on this topic. Unfortunately, as Jason Griffey has pointed out, the American Library Association and its affiliated periodicals such as RUSQ seem more interested in demanding open access from other publishers than in supplying it themselves, and the article is not available online.

Since the crossover use of public libraries by college students and its flipside, the use of college libraries by non-college students, is of interest to me, I'll take the liberty of summarizing some of the article's findings.

The top reasons cited by the students who were surveyed about their use of public libraries can be paraphrased as follows:

(1) Public library staff are more helpful.
(2) Public library is easier to use.

Two reasons tied for third place:
(3) Subjective appeal of public library.
(3) Public library (appeals to / accomodates) children.

It sounds like college libraries have some P.R. work to do. (The last-named reason, the public library's appeal to children, seems to be relevant to students who have childcare responsibilities and need to combine personal research time with keeping the kiddies occupied -- something which seems beyond the scope of academic library service.)

Other reasons cited included surprisingly frequent statements like "The public library has more materials that are useful to me", "the public library has more materials for pleasure reading", "the campus library's materials are often unavailable", and "the campus library is too big/too confusing".

The first would seem to indicate that the college library's materials selection practices may be out of touch with the students' actual needs. (Too many faculty demands for abstruse material, perhaps?). The second seems reasonable, although I'd suggest that the line between pleasure and "educational" materials is a vague one, especially in the humanities where fiction, film, etc., can be the subject (or the vehicle) of serious intellectual inquiry. The latter two statements seem to indicate that the college library needs to do some work with inventory control, simplify the physical layout, and make the electronic gateways less confusing. ("Huron State", for example, has over half its collection in an inaccessible storage area, which wouldn't be a major problem except that the user interface for retrieving items from storage is so nightmarishly nonintuitive that it's a wonder to me any non-librarians ever figure it out.)

Arnell found that previous studies, especially one by the late revered Marvin Scilken, had taken the approach of trying to push college students out of the public libraries and "back where they belong". Similarly, I've seen state-supported university libraries that refused to permit non-students to use any electronic resources -- and were meanwhile rapidly eliminating all non-electronic means of access to their collections. Such approaches seem shortsighted and unjustifiable to me, since both public and academic libraries in most cases draw funds from the population as a whole. College students pay local city and county taxes just like everyone else, including property tax (indirectly, through their landlords.) Funds from state and local taxes directly or indirectly subsidize most colleges and universities, especially those which are explicitly "state" institutions of higher education. Certainly they will need to have different priorities in acquiring materials. But why shouldn't a college student be able to use a public library copy of, say, The Great Gatsby that his rent money and local taxes helped to buy? And why shouldn't an attorney, businessman, or other professional whose taxes are supporting a nearby state university be able to use its library's resources for his needs?