In 1976, Deng Xiaoping opened China’s economy to help modernize the country. This decision created a need for an educated work force to develop China’s economy. In turn, China’s citizens experienced educational opportunities to travel and/or live abroad, and gain knowledge from higher-education institutions located in developed economies. Students from China began traveling to the United States to obtain higher-education degrees in the 1980s, and since 2009, China has sent more international students to the United States than any other country (Open doors, 2013). Many higher-education institutions have focused efforts on supporting their Chinese international student populations, as it represents growth and relevance to the institution. Academic service departments such as libraries often assist students in the completion of their studies through user-centered services, relevant collections, and instruction in support of information literacy skills. In spite of the great effort that academic libraries undertake in researching user needs, unique populations, such as Chinese international students, can inadvertently be ignored when designing services or collections. This study seeks to investigate the institutional learning cultures in China and the United States in relation to the information-seeking behavior of a specific population of students, and to aid in the development of evidence-based research for detecting student information needs. Utilizing Brenda Dervin’s sense-making method as a framework, this study investigates the information-seeking behavior of Chinese graduate students from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences. A total of 20 qualitative interviews were conducted with these graduate students. Interviews were transcribed, imported into Atlas.ti, and analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach. Results from the study detected varied practices to identify and utilize authoritative and reliable sources of information in support of participants’ information-seeking behavior. These include: reliance on personal networks, assumptions of reliability of information, and awareness of resources that help. Participants’ opinions on authority and reliability of information offer insight into the need to further investigate the detection of information literacy skills among similar populations of international graduate students.
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