Information Seeking Behavior of Library and Information Science Faculty in Research with a Special Reference to the Use of Networked Information Sources and Services: A Case Study Performed at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The purpose of this study was to explore and investigate the ways faculty at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign use Networked Information Sources and Services to support their research task. Library and Information Sciences faculty at the University of Illinois were chosen as the population for this study. The study aimed to answer the following questions: (1) What are the main academic research activities the faculty performs? (2) To what degree does each faculty member depend on Networked Information Sources and Services? (3) What are the main reasons for using Networked Information Sources and Services? and (4) What characteristics of electronic sources limit using of Networked Information Sources and Services? The Web based Questionnaire was the main tool for collecting data. The following two hypothesis were addressed: (1) There will be a difference in using Networked Information Sources and Services to perform the basic research task or activity according to faculty rank, and gender; and (2) The second hypothesis indicates that the degree to which faculty depend on Networked Information Sources electronic sources will differ across the research tasks/activities, as follows: (A) They will depend more on electronic mails for research tasks than News groups; (B) They will depend more on electronic journals for research tasks than electronic archives; and (C) They will depend more on electronic databases for research tasks than Internet Directories and Search Engines. Appended are: (1) Formal Email; (2) Paper-Based Questionnaire; and (3) Web-Based Questionnaire. (Contains 3 footnotes, 13 figures, and 10 tables.)