Why do college students prefer using the Internet for research as opposed to research in the library?

Well I personally think there are few reasons due to which students think of using internet as a source of research as opposed to research in the library. I will share my view with context to India.

1. In India, the universities and institutes do not stock all the research journals pertaining to each and every field. Whereas, they have subscription of major online databases. Hence they prefer using internet search.

2. Another reason which I can think of is related to the quality of research as an output from here. Usually a lot of research journals which have popped up lately in India, are fake and do not have credentials to back it up. So the young students or researchers tend to go with the flow and refer to online sources to gather secondary data and literature.

3. The importance of research is not inculcated in the students who hail from affiliated institutes and for them mere getting a degree or job is of prime importance. 

I feel this reasons can be considered for the switch.

The above may be true in India, but may be the opposite in the US.  While I work at a small university, our librarians are usually able to find articles for students even if we do not subscribe to the specific journal.  Fake or non-peer reviewed journals are rife on the internet, and some of the peer review may be done by peers with a lack of knowledge or an agenda.  Your third argument may be very key in that the tradition of research/scholarship may be less important than the pragmatic need to simply get a degree and a job.

My experience from teaching research practices at the undergraduate and graduate levels is similar.  Students seem to prefer to Google than to go to the library databases to find credible research.  I have discovered through conversations with students (not a systematic inquiry) that they do not know how to search the library databases and they are not required by professors to use scholarly journal sources.

I have changed my assignment expectations to require scholarly journal articles and I have included a lecture demo on how to search the library.

You might check out this article that I have my graduate students read:

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Jiao, Q. G. (2000). I'll go to the library later: The relationship between academic procrastination and library anxiety. College & Research Libraries, 61(1), 45-54.

Besides the intentions mentioned above on the part of the researchers in India and US and lack of knowledge of  'how to search the library databases' and unavailability of 'all the research journals pertaining to each and every field' in libraries, I think  we should also consider the changes whole technology is bringing in terms of thinking itself.

Internet offers easy access to every kind of information and the abundance of it, for a researcher (without having ideas and capability to differentiate between authentic and unauthentic reading materials), also brings in an assumption that everything about the subject they are searching is available to them on internet.

This is considered as the facility against the thinking that there exists no better reading material in the library and more importantly the thought is authenticated by the absence of knowledge that there exists any possibility of availability of such reading material in the library at all.

For me, this 'absence' matters more in this regard. It should be corrected by demo, workshops, etc.

I agree with the point of view of the previous comments, specially the one from Ms. Yost. However, there is something missing: ours was a generation of feeling, touching and writing in the paper. The new generations are, unfortunately, the culture of the intangible. Internet is a key in the process of acquiring information and its appropriate for them, not for us. Thats what we find the situation strange. On the other side, there is this tendency to make everything available online , because is cost effective.  Internet makes to the new generarions the task of searching something easy and they know that, therefore, internet is their focus. 

I wish students or any researcher do not ignore the paper material when the same is not available online.

Let me clarify that library databases are electronic databases just like the internet and accessible 24/7. While some students might like real paper journals, that's not usually possible. I hold that if students knew how to search the library electronically like they know how to search the internet electronically, there would be an increase in critical thinking skills and knowledge base.

I've answered many questions on RG in long form, but this is the first time I will stoop to answering a question in a single sentence based on my gut reaction. Answer: Students today (in the United States at least) are, thanks to our baby-sitting public education system, indescribably lazy. We also live in a culture of immediate gratification, which doesn't permit holding a research thought long enough to wait for an inter-library loan to arrive, to wander across town to another research library to see what might be lurking in their stacks, etc. Research will always involve a fair amount of gluing the ass to the chair, but, but sometimes in the name of research, one must unglue it.

Hello!

Regarding your question: the internet (specially the oficial repositories) are used as a guide in order to know which perspective bout an author or book has not been explored. Then, sometimes the authors that you want to investigate has not been translated or might have works that are not avaiable at the local public library. Then, internet is helpful but, of course, nothing compares to the physicial approach to the book and it also demands focusness and silence, two necesary elements for any research.

Sure, some students might be lazy, but I do not think that is the major issue. I agree that with advancing technology, our ways to research have changed. This isn't just about databases, but also about primary and secondary books that are now fully or partially accessible online through the university you are enrolled at. 

Secondly, students grow up with the internet, and they usually have a good sense of how to navigate it. It gives them a way to kick off their research by looking at internet resources. A lot of them also connect online to exchange ideas and resources with other students.

Finally, more schools need to train students in researching library databases effectively. This is not something they have grown up with, and I personally do not see a lot of schools that make sure that students know how to search and access resources that are offered through the institution (including the possibilities of interlibrary loans). I received some training as an undergraduate, but it was extremely limited.

Probably because it is possible to find reliable sources easily on the internet. Besides, not even the best library will present so many titles - internet gives a broader access to, at least, a large number of titles. Sometimes, by browsing in the internet it is possible to find references to important texts, even if they are not available on line, but it is easier to go to a library or a bookshop knowing which book is needed. 

Easy accessibility. Many document in the library take a lot of time to access them. Moreover, the informatin is at the finger tips.

Many college libraries maintain a digital reference database and participate in scholarly research databases e.g. JSTOR. This adds an additional lens to your research i.e., "why do modern libraries facilitate digital research? That said, there remain many publications which are not digitized, so libraries and hard copy publications are not obsolete. Libraries and librarians are keeping-up with information technology and continue to provide valuable guidance to scholars. 

Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual treasure trove of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is available on the Internet. I wish students or any researcher do not ignore the paper material.

students tend to use Internet than the library resources for several reasons

1. It is easy to access Internet. It is available all the time at their convenience

2. Google Interface is much friendlier than  the scholarly databases provided by the library

3. With a couple of clicks they can get a good number of papers, easily than searching across the library databases. 

4. Looking for books in the library could be considered as tedious

5. I wonder whether copy pasting chunks from Internet material can also be a reason if any software is not used for Plagiarism detection.

Because it is easy..  Usefull & fast.  Perhaps! 

Responderé en español con frases simples, creo que un programa de traducción automática podrá traducir bien el sentido de esta respuesta.

Soy estudiante universitario. Revisé las respuestas anteriores. Casi todas se enfocan en la idea de que "es fácil" o "les da pereza" o "no le dan suficiente importancia" o "la malvada tecnología lo arruinó todo"... desde mi perspectiva digo que hay un factor que están olvidando: la fobia social. Creo que el uso de aparatos electrónicos reemplazó muchas interacciones sociales, y ahora eso causa problemas de socialización en nosotros los jóvenes. A mi me pasa, a veces siento un miedo irracional por preguntar en la biblioteca cuando tengo alguna duda sobre algún material. Buscar en Internet implica menos riesgos, menos vergüenzas, menos juicios o interacciones con personas. Es un método seguro. Además la lingüística computacional está muy avanzada y los algoritmos de búsqueda ayudan más que un mal bibliotecario.

Las bibliotecas parecen un espacio rígido, con reglas de conducta, en donde no se pueden cometer errores, donde el bibliotecario se enoja si lo haces perder tiempo... Por otro lado, Google academics, Dialnet, Redalyc, Jstor o Scielo no se va a enojar por que busquemos muchas veces o nos equivoquemos en la búsqueda... Creo que las respuestas anteriores tienen mucho sentido, pero también creo que hay que entender otros factores.

Por último, aclaro que soy estudiante de letras: filología hispánica, la mayor parte de mi carrera la debo pasar en bibliotecas, sé buscar, sé encontrar materiales bibliográficos incluso de memoria, y aún siento esas presiones y miedos en las bibliotecas a pocos semestres de graduarme. Hablo sobre lo que me pasa a mí y a otras personas en mi universidad.

because it is easy and time saving

I believe the book "The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries" organized by Dal Yong Jin and Dwayne Winseck can help in the perception that technology is associated with speed. Thus, research books will never be discarded as a whole, but will always sencundária, as the search information may be all stored in one single place. This is the case of sites like Google. I hope I helped you.

Search engines avail voluminous information 24X7 open access. However, when information sources needs to be subscribed, libraries are a good place.

Actually, search engines are also a vast electronic online library and it is like big fish eating small fishes.

It is convenient and easy to use and research shows that people might sacrifice quality for convenience. There is also an assumption among younger generation that anything important must be on the Internet. If it is important some one has put it on. Read this article which is interview with young physicists

What is not available online is not worth reading?

University library often maintain hundreds of subscriptions to peer-reviewed journals.  Students can easily access these journals for their own research interests without needing to pay for any subscriptions.  In an indirect manner, we do actually use the library for our research.  

Some fields, like literature or history, may be more suited to the use of physical texts, though not a particular library might not house the desired text.  For example, if I were looking for a first edition copy of Newton's Principia, but I attended the University of Otago (in New Zealand), I would be hard-pressed to find a physical copy.  However, If I were a student at the College of William and Mary (in Virginia, USA), then I would need only to go to the College's rare books collection at the library.  All of this might not matter since I might simply search for a scanned PDF of the first edition.

Bottom-line, using the internet for background research and peer-reviewed literature synthesis is often more efficient and simpler than calling or emailing someone or some institution to request access to a physical copy.

Possible reasons students prefer using Internet for research include:

However, students also need to be wary that not all the materials accessible from Internet are reliable or valid in which certain intelligent verification is needed.

This question particularly interests me as well.

All previous answers contain possible solutions. However, I think it would also be worth looking into the way digital technologies change all of us, and particularly one generation in respect to previous ones. It's one thing if your University Library doesn't have a copy of what you need (isn't it sweet to get that PDF online, especially if it's for free?). However, it's altogether a different thing if you prefer Google anyway : I believe it has a lot to do with our contemporary presentist temporality (french historian Francois Hartog) and other such mentalities. Everything has to be now, and the so-called smartphone does just that - the magnificent instant gratification.

Your phone, and google or other multi-nationals are smart, so you don't have to be. Being smart is a lot of hard work, and sadly, kids find their "phone" less intimidating than these multinationals (!), or having to think or expose themselves to the austerity of an actual intellectual workplace, such as a library hall.