When Susanna Oresky needs to do some research for a class assignment, she heads for the nearest computer -- not the University of Pittsburgh's Hillman Library.

"Usually I try first for what information is online and if I'm satisfied with the information, I probably won't go to the library," said Oresky, a Pitt freshman anthropology and art history major, as she ate lunch with a friend at the university's student union this week.

Statements like that are the stuff of librarian's nightmares.

Students' increasing reliance on the Internet and declining use of library reference desks for their research have Pitt librarians worried students are missing out on the school's extensive collection of databases, journals and archives -- and that both their research and their education might be suffering.

As a result, university librarians have made the unusual decision to take their resources out to students, said Marian Hampton, coordinator of library instruction for the University of Pittsburgh.

"So by going out to where students are, that might give them the opportunity they might not have sought out themselves," Hampton said.

University of Pittsburgh library officials hope meeting students in person will help overcome any fear of a snooty reception at the reference desk. Meeting a friendly, helpful librarian, they said, could persuade students to ask more freely for help.

To make that connection, library officials are taking their "HelpHub" program -- which they first tried in the dorms last semester without getting much response -- to popular study spots in hope of sparking interest.

The help desks will be located at the Petersen Events Center food court on Mondays, the second floor of Posvar Hall on Tuesdays and the Cathedral of Learning's commons area on Wednesdays.

The sessions, which last from 6 to 9 p.m., began on Monday and will run through April 14, just before final exams begin.

Although they are hoping to draw more people to visit the libraries in person, the librarians are bringing a wireless laptop to the HelpHubs to show students the available databases in the system's online collection.

Students now can find entire scientific journals online instead of tracking down paper editions inside libraries. With faster and easier access online, many universities across the country have seen the number of students using their paper reference materials dwindle.

Circulation at the University of Pittsburgh system has remained relatively stable at about 600,000 transactions a year between 1997 and 2003, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Association of Research Libraries. The number of inquiries at the reference desks, however, has fallen from nearly 454,000 to about 234,000 in the same period, the association found.

The increasing use of the Internet also has changed the way students seek information; scanning endless Web pages for key words and phrases has trained many students to collect high points rather than to delve for deep understanding, according to Hampton and others.

"People aren't reading with depth on the Web," she said. "That definitely has changed people's information-seeking behavior."

The information available on the Internet, while more easily accessible, is more limited than what typically can be found on a library's shelves or in its microfilm room. Just 6 percent of academic journals are available online, according to a 2001 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Many students, however, apparently are satisfied with that limited pool of resources. In their first week, the librarians who volunteered at the HelpHubs -- to answer questions, give guidance on research assignments and show students how to tap into library resources via the Web -- got few takers.

On Monday night, just two people stopped by the blue, satin-draped help desk that Hampton was tending inside Petersen's food court. And on Tuesday, students barely gave a passing glance to the help desk that librarian Jacob Deininger set up inside Posvar, and not one stopped.

Unless you count the woman who doubled back for goodies.

"Can I have a free pencil?" the woman said. "Do I have to buy anything?"

"No, you don't have to buy anything," said Deininger, who runs the microforms, current periodicals and listening center at Hillman Library.

"Take some chocolate, too," he added, gesturing at the foil-wrapped, miniature chocolate Easter bunnies he had set out in a small purple bowl by the library pencils.

If they had stopped, students might have heard about the hundreds of databases to which the university subscribes, giving them access to everything from African-American newspapers of the 19th century and the electronic journals of the American Institute of Physics to the Zoological Record and a ZIP code-based address finder.

They also might have heard about the library system's archive of Pittsburgh history, about the microfiche collection of periodicals and newspapers, and about the university's new online chat room called Ask-A-Librarian.

Students who use those resources not only get the most from their tuition, Deininger said. They also deepen their research skills and sidestep the increasingly common problem of plagiarism, he said.

"We've heard this from professors more and more, that students will turn in papers that are cut and pasted from the Web," Deininger said. "They really wish they could get the students to interact with us more."

Corey Kuehner, a junior majoring in environmental studies, said he has mandatory study hours inside Petersen's academic center, so he doesn't necessarily visit Hillman or the other libraries to study.

He does go in to check out books for research, usually after finding the titles on PITTCat, the library system's online card catalog. His most recent visit was earlier this week to get some books on the reconstruction of the Florida Everglades, he said.

Some students, however, do much of their research on the Internet inside their dorm rooms, he said.

"A lot of people don't want to walk to Hillman," he said.

Other students say they already know about the library's reference resources and use them when they need to. Like Oresky and Kuehner, many start with PITTCat to look up books.

Some, like freshmen engineering students Cameo Rowe and Usman Mushtaq, go online to find scientific journals and databases for research on topics such as self-healing inorganic surfaces and thermal gels that cool computers without fans.

Mushtaq said he also visits the reference desk for help with papers and projects, and that the librarians often have guided him toward useful books and articles.

When he had to write a paper last month on the history of the University of Pittsburgh, they also pointed him to the library's archive, where he found original documents he otherwise never would have used, he said.

"I really didn't even know the archives existed," Mushtaq said.