Information seeking behavior of academic scientists

Abstract

The information seeking behavior of academic scientists is being transformed by the availability of electronic resources for searching, retrieving, and reading scholarly materials. A census survey was conducted of academic science researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to capture their current information seeking behavior. Nine hundred two subjects (26%) completed responses to a 15-minute Web-based survey. The survey questions were designed to quantify the transition to electronic communications and how this affects different aspects of information seeking. Significant changes in information seeking behavior were found, including increased reliance on web based resources, fewer visits to the library, and almost entirely electronic communication of information. The results can guide libraries and other information service organizations as they adapt to meet the needs of today's information searchers. Simple descriptive statistics are reported for the individual questions. Additionally, analysis of results is broken out by basic science and medical science departments. The survey tool and protocol used in this study have been adopted for use in a nationwide survey of the information seeking behavior of academic scientists. IntroductionAs we begin the twenty-first century, we are seeing a dramatic shift towards electronic communication of scientific scholarly information. While much of this was presaged during the computing revolution of the 1980s and 1990s, it has been the recent widespread adoption of Web-based electronic journals that has been the primary driver for change. The escalation of journal subscription costs and limited academic library budgets have paved the way for the electronic distribution of articles. Another significant factor in the adoption of e-articles has been the ease of finding articles on the Web via free search engines such as Google Scholar or from library-sponsored links in online catalogs and subscribed databases. The end result is that searching, retrieving and reading of scientific scholarly articles appears to be moving towards becoming completely electronic, with the only holdout being the preference by many for reading print copies. The transition to primarily electronic communication has the potential to significantly change the ways scholarly communication takes place. These changes range from the convenience of accessing electronic material on the reader's desktop, through the speed at which scholars can communicate new information, to accessibility to larger amounts of the material, and finally to the corresponding problem of sifting through larger amounts of potentially useful materials.While many disciplines of scholarly communication have been impacted, academic science appears to be one of the most affected disciplines. This is due to scientists' need to communicate results rapidly, their early adoption of technology, and their support for other types of digital content such as scientific databases (e.g., the Genbank database, as described in Brown...

Information Behavior and Expectations of Veterinary Researchers and Their Requirements for Academic Library Services

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