nformation seeking is a basic activity for all scholars. It is the aspect of scholarly work of most interest to academic librarians because academic libraries strive to develop collections, services, and organizational structures that will facilitate it. Yet information seeking is an activity about which we know less than we would like, especially for the humanities. A handful of recent studies have begun to dispel our ignorance of how humanists seek information, but we are still largely in the exploratory stage.1 A basic question these studies have asked is, "How do scholars identify what they will read?"This question was very much on our minds when we began to participate as fellows in a year-long seminar in the humanities at the Institute for the Humanities (University of Illinois at Chicago). Our efforts were funded by the Council on Library Resources and devoted to addressing issues in strategic planning for ./ libraries. Through our participation, we sought to learn more about how humanists find and use information in their work and, from this, to develop questions for further research and to suggest library services that can help these scholars become more productive. From earlier studies of scholarly information seeking, principally surveys, we had learned that scholars rely, first, on the references in publications they read; second, on communications from colleagues; third, on formal bibliography (defined later); and fourth, on librarians.2 Because most of this earlier research antedates the recent, and rapidly expanding adoption of computers by humanists, we also set out to explore whether the increase in machine-readable information and in the use of computers by humanists had affected the way the fellows sought information. 3 We proposed to take advantage of the small size of the seminar and the regular interaction among members to identify, through open-ended questions and unstructured discussions, issues and trends unreported by earlier surveys. Over the course of an academic year, we particiStephen E. Wiberley, Jr., is Bibliographer for the Social Sciences and William G.
A ten-year study of a group of humanists reveals that temporal factors had a significant impact on their adoption of electronic information tech nology. This article identifies and describes four types of time that influ ence humanists' behavior. Three are types of time spent: anticipated start up time, actual start-up time, and use time; the fourth is time of life, that is, the stage of a scholar's project or career. Because the content of elec tronic resources is closely related to use of time, this article also dis cusses how content affects whether a scholar adopts an electronic re source. Librarians who are sensitive to humanists' temporal considerations can better help them utilize technology.nline catalogs, word process ing, electronic mail, biblio graphic databases, statistical software, and spreadsheets all date from the 1970s. Electronic mailing lists appeared in the 1980s, and the World Wide Web began in the 1990s. 1In 1987, when the authors first interviewed a group of eleven humanists about their use of libraries, in formation, and technology, all had used online catalogs and seven did word pro cessing, but only two used e-mail. None had searched a bibliographic database, used statistical software, constructed a spreadsheet, or subscribed to an electronic mailing list. And, of course, none had used the Web. The careers of these eleven coin cide with the revolution in electronic in formation technology, so all the innova tions it has brought have been available to them, some for many years. What they have chosen to utilize and how they have done so helps librarians better understand one of their largest user groups.Conversations with humanists reveal several perspectives on electronic informa tion technology. A recurring theme is the way that temporal factors affect what scholars do. Earlier research also has found time to be an important influence on the adoption of electronic information technol ogy. This article addresses the question: How do temporal considerations influence the use of electronic information technol ogy by humanists? It explains four differ ent conceptions of time that librarians can use to understand how humanists inter act with electronic information technology.
Developments in information technology have had a major impact on the conduct of research and scholarship. In general, humanists have been slower than scientists and social scientists to adopt new technologies in their work. This paper, a longitudinal study of eleven humanists, corroborates the general pattern and provides insight into why humanists use technology as they do. It relates its findings to a definition of the humanities: those fields of scholarship that strive to reconstruct, describe, and interpret the activities and accomplishments of men and women by establishing and studying documents and artifacts created by those men and women. The discussion emphasizes that the primary evidence that humanists use differentiates them from scientists and social scientists.
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