Abstract

This study focused on understanding the Korean university students’ (both undergraduates and graduates) use of foreign language for scholarly information retrieval especially in different search strategies employed based on users’ characteristics. A new model was developed based on Ellis’s behavioral model of information seeking strategies. The research applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the data. The students used a variety of foreign language information seeking strategies at different stages of academic information retrieval based on his/her field of study or level of education. The liberal arts and social science students had more difficulty in selecting proper search terms in the foreign language than the science and technology students. This difficulty resulted in less preference for using foreign language queries by the liberal arts and social science students. The students relied more on the bibliographic and citation information in scholarly information retrieval using foreign language queries than the Korean queries. The research outcomes should provide some guidelines on how the Korean university libraries offer information literacy programs and other services based on the patrons’ characteristics.