Library research as collaborative information seeking

•Students working collaboratively found more useful sources and achieved greater information coverage while searching.•Students working individually showed better results for query effectiveness and amount of relevant sources found.•Students working collaboratively reported significantly higher cognitive load.•Participants described library research as time consuming, inefficient, frustrating, and restrictive.•Participants described how an online collaborative search system could address these challenges.

Today's students are accustomed to collaborative information behavior, with group work being a common requirement in educational settings. This research focuses on the collaborative information seeking behavior of college students through a library-based study of individuals and pairs conducting exploratory research for a class assignment. Participants used a collaborative search system when completing the study tasks. Findings showed that students working collaboratively found more useful sources and achieved greater information coverage, while individuals showed better results for query effectiveness and number of relevant sources. Challenges that students face when conducting library research were identified. The findings offer librarians, instructors, and learning technologists suggestions as to how to support group work, and how collaborative search systems can address the challenges faced by students doing group work using library resources.