Serial Use by Social Science Faculty: A Survey

Abstract

sERVICE TO THE FACULTY , undeniably a high priority of the academic research library, has traditionally been seen as closely related to the size of the collection. The assumption has been that faculty needs are satisfied by a large collection, by special borrowing privileges, and by the provision of carrels or studies in the library. Historically, academic librarians have believed that faculty members were expert bibliographers who knew how to use . the card catalog and were at home in the book stacks. 1 Reference services, when given, have often been designed to help the faculty members find material for themselves.Although through the years authors like Rothstein have argued for the provision of actual information to the scholarly community, 2 academic librarians have continued to believe that such service is neither needed nor desired. To the extent that the humanist scholar is seen as the prototype faculty member, the librarians' view of the faculty's need for service is correct. 3 The evidence suggests that the typical social science faculty member is different from this prototype.Nelson's survey revealed that social scientists were less aware of library services and more critical of librarians' performance than

Library trends: Toward information literacy — Innovative perspectives for the 1990s

“…Their overall use of indexing systems may be lower than that of scientists. These findings have been corroborated by smaller studies conducted by Wood and Bower (1969), Styvendaele (1977), Stenstrom andMcBride (1979, 1982), and Stieg (1981). More recently, Folster (1989) studied faculty in four social science departments finding once again that reading journals in their own field, tracing references, consulting personal collections, consulting colleagues, scanning journals in other fields, and attending conferences all ranked above use of abstracts or indexes as techniques of information gathering.…”

The Information Needs of Historians

“…4 A serial use survey studied information patterns of social scientists at the University of Illinois from a slightly different perspective. 5 Two articles, one of social science citation studies 6 and one of humanities use studies, 7 summarized work that had been done and provided comparative data, although, interestingly, both excluded history. The study of the humanities obviously considered history a social science, the study of the social sciences considered it one of the humanities.…”

Psychological Processes in the Use of Electronic Journals

“…A number of studies, e.g. Stenstrom and McBridge (1979), Jenkins (1997), have suggested that users regularly use up to 20 journals. A valuable `shelf' could be constructed with this number of journals which could bè browsed' effectively and efficiently.…”