Perilaku Pencarian Informasi Santri Madrasah Aliyah Swasta (MAS) di Perpustakaan Yayasan Islamic Centre Sumatera Uatara

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine and understand the behavior of students of Private Islamic Senior High School (MAS) in searching for information related to school assignments in the library of the Islamic Center Foundation of North Sumatra, based on Kuhlthau's theory. This study is relevant to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4 on quality education because it examines the information-seeking behavior of students as an effort to strengthen information literacy and the use of school libraries. This type of research is descriptive qualitative and the data collection techniques are observation, interviews, and documentation. The informants in this study are 10 students who actively visit the library, consisting of 5 students from grade XI and 5 students from grade XII who were selected through purposive sampling. The techniques used to analyze the data are data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. Based on Kuhlthau's theory, information seeking behavior can be identified at the initiation stage, where students demonstrate awareness of their need for schoolwork information, accompanied by anxiety due to limited digital access. Furthermore, at the selection stage, students are able to choose topics based on teacher guidance or personal interests through initial consultations. At the exploration stage, students actively seek out physical information sources such as books on shelves with the help of librarians despite being faced with confusing terms. The focus formulation stage demonstrates students' ability to formulate search focus through peer discussions and self-verification. At the collection stage, students collect relevant information with increased self-confidence, but are constrained by limited collections. At the presentation stage, students successfully present their search results in school assignments satisfactorily. The results of this study indicate that in general, students at the Islamic Center Foundation of North Sumatra MAS carry out all stages of information seeking based on the theory proposed by Kuhlthau in school libraries with limited digital access, which indicates the need for improved facilities and information literacy training.