A snapshot of information use patterns of academics in British universities
| Pages | 341-359 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520610686274 |
| Published date | 01 July 2006 |
| Date | 01 July 2006 |
| Author | Donna Gardiner,David McMenemy,Gobinda Chowdhury |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
A snapshot of information
use patterns of academics in
British universities
Donna Gardiner, David McMenemy and Gobinda Chowdhury
Department of Computer and Information Sciences,
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to study information behaviour of academics in the digital age. Compares
information behaviour of British university academics in three disciplines – computer and
information sciences, business/management, and English literature.
Design/methodology/approach – Discusses information behaviour of academics in the digital age.
Findings – English academics make higher use of printed information resources, such as text and
reference books, than academics of any other discipline included in this study; they generally tended to
be the least frequent users of electronic resources such as full-text databases, indexing and abstracting
databases, search engines, and internet sites. CIS academics generally tended to make greatest use of
electronic-based information resources, and the least use of print-based information resources, and
business/management academics fell somewhere in between these two disciplines. CIS academics were
generally the most enthusiastic about the benefits of electronic resources, whereas English academics
were the least enthusiastic about them. Nearly a quarter of English academics disagreed to some
extent that electronic information was easier to use than printed resources, which might go some way
to explain their lower use of electronic materials, and higher use of printed materials.
Research limitations/implications – Results of the quantitative study should have been
supported and substantiated by quantitative analyses. Similar studies involving users from many
more disciplines could show better discipline-wise differences in user behaviour.
Originality/value – This is a research paper based on a nation-wide survey of academics in British
universities.
Keywords Behaviour, Digitallibraries, Information retrieval, Academic staff,Universities,
United Kingdom
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Web and digital libraries have been with us for just over a decade, and during this
period we have witnessed an explosive growth – both in terms of creation and
distribution – of digital information resources and services. We now use the internet,
web and some sort of digital or hybrid libraries in almost every activity of our daily
life. A typical knowledge worker in today’s digital information world can get access to
information resources and services through:
.intranets, such as those created by companies and their global partners;
.resources of collaborative networks of companies, e.g. extranets;
.web search tools: search engines, meta search engines and specialty search
engines, and directories;
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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Information use
patterns
341
Refereed article received
17 December 2005
Revision approved for
publication 15 February
2006
Online Information Review
Vol. 30 No. 4, 2006
pp. 341-359
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520610686274
.online databases (database search services) such as Dialog (www.dialog.com),
PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi), Ovid (www.ovid.com),
ABI/Inform (http://libnet.ac.il/ ,libnet/abi.htm), etc.;
.subject gateways such as Biz/ed (www.bized.ac.uk/), EEVL (www.eevl.ac.uk/),
SOSIG (www.sosig.ac.uk), OMNI (www.omni.ac.uk/), etc.; and
.digital libraries like ACM (American Computing Machinery) digital library
(http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm), New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL; www.sadl.
uleth.ca/nz/cgi-bin/library), National Science Digital Library (NSDL; http://nsdl.
org/), Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD; www.
ndltd.org/), etc.
Users in an academic institution now have access to digital information resources
through a variety of channels, such as:
.library websites organised for specific users, e.g. the subject organization of
resources at a university library;
.other websites organized by departments or by individual faculty members for
the benefit of students, academics and researchers;
.research publication archives, e.g. those organized by individual institutions or a
group of institutions/consortia;
.e-journals – both free and fee-based available through the publishers’ websites, as
well as through service providers such as Ingenta (www.ingentaconnect.com/);
.e-books: scholarly monographs available through the custom-built information
access systems;
.specific websites of research institutions, funding agencies, and so on, e.g. TREC
(http://trec.nist.gov/), JISC (www.jisc.ac.uk/), NSF (www.nsf.gov/), etc; and
.special digital libraries, subject gateways, and virtual reference services.
This variety of choices and, moreover, the typical characteristics of each information
service, significantly influence the users’ information seeking, access and use patterns.
This paper reports on a research study that aimed to find out the general information
use patterns of university academics in Britain. This study is based on a national
questionnaire survey of academics in British universities. In order to study
discipline-wise variations, if any, academics from three different disciplines, viz.,
computer and information sciences, business/management and English literature, were
studied. The study focused on the general use of the internet and search engines etc. by
academics from different disciplines, with special reference to their use of, and attitude
towards, printed as well as electronic information resources. It also aimed to find out
the major problems faced by academics while trying to access and use electronic
information.
Background
A number of research studies have taken place in the recent past that aimed to
determine how the digital information revolution has influenced the information
behaviour of users. Tenopir (2003) mentions that over 200 such studies have taken
place in this area, most of which are in the US, though a number of studies have also
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