A paper at the recent ALT-C 2010 conference (titled: ‘Into something rich and strange’ — making sense of the sea-change) brings confirmation that students are abandoning or simply never using expensive library databases. Middlesex University researchers reported that…

“People expect library resources to work in the same way as those available on the internet, that is, simple and user friendly. Unless changes are made within library-subscribed [services], users will continue utilising internet resources [thus] missing the opportunity of accessing high quality scholarly materials.” […] “Many had never met their subject librarian, nor were they aware that the library provides subject support in finding information”

The conference paper would seem to arise from the Middlesex University JISC User Behaviour Observational Study: User Behaviour in Resource Discovery – Final Report (Nov 2009), which is online for free.