Information seeking behavior of academic scientists

Authors:
Bradley M. Hemminger;Dihui Lu;K. T. L. Vaughan;Stephanie J. Adams
Affiliations:
206A Manning Hall, SILS, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC. 27599-3360;School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;Health Sciences Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Venue:
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Year:
2007

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Abstract

The information seeking behavior of academic scientists is beingtransformed by the availability of electronic resources forsearching, retrieving, and reading scholarly materials. A censussurvey was conducted of academic science researchers at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to capture theircurrent information seeking behavior. Nine hundred two subjects(26%) completed responses to a 15-minute Web-based survey. Thesurvey questions were designed to quantify the transition toelectronic communications and how this affects different aspects ofinformation seeking. Significant changes in information seekingbehavior were found, including increased reliance on web basedresources, fewer visits to the library, and almost entirelyelectronic communication of information. The results can guidelibraries and other information service organizations as they adaptto meet the needs of today's information searchers. Simpledescriptive statistics are reported for the individual questions.Additionally, analysis of results is broken out by basic scienceand medical science departments. The survey tool and protocol usedin this study have been adopted for use in a nationwide survey ofthe information seeking behavior of academic scientists. ©2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.