At the beginning of the semester, you were assigned to a particular user group (social sciences, humanities and the science and technology). Do a literature search introspecting on the information needs and behavior of the user group you have chosen/assigned. Summarize this literature and contemplate upon various models / theories of users’ information-seeking behavior and establish the validity how they contribute to your understanding of your user group. Add your own ideas how to best serve this group and your library users in general.
ANSWER
Based on my literature search and reading, faculty- or course-wise, there was no clear and definitive difference in information seeking behavior between these groups of users. Whether the users are from social sciences, humanities or science and technology would not determine the way they seek for information during their college or university years. There are other factors which have more influence over information seeking behaviors of this user groups.
I would support the above statement with the findings of studies made at Carnegie Mellon University by Carol George et al (2006) which attempted to look into information seeking behavior of graduate students from different faculties such as arts and architecture, business and policy, computer science, engineering, humanities and sciences in the light of Kuhlthau’s and Dervin’s information seeking behavior theories.
These theories were reflected in the research questions they asked such as the influence of people in their information seeking, and the various factors that would determine their behaviors. The authors found that the courses the students take is not the determining factor but depends more on the convenience, speed and ease of use of the information systems they choose to use. Hence, immediate help from people especially lecturers, supervisors and friends fared highest, followed by Internet use and online materials. The library would only fall into the third place.
Similar result is reflected in a study done among undergraduate students pursuing their Final Year Projects at Computer Science and Information Technology Faculty at the University of Malaya (Mohd Saad & Zainab 2007). They prefer to use Internet sources and depend on their lecturers, supervisors and friends to obtain information. The library is the last resort to most of them and only one ever consults a librarian in the course of doing the project. They shun away from library because they think using the library is exhaustive and they could not find what they want. The databases are also time-consuming to use because the databases are not user friendly and their systems are difficult to understand.
Another study by Heinstrom (2004) in Abo University in Finland which also sampled students from every faculty in the university but with psychological perspective also showed similar findings in the context of faculty or course-based information seeking behavior. The author found that the personality and study approach has more influence on the way the masters students sought information rather than their courses or at which stage the progress of their thesis were. In this study Heinstrom categorized the sample into three types of information seeking behavior: fast surfing, broad scanning and deep diving. Fast surfers yield the least result when seeking information while those from deep diving group normally fare the best.
To understand this situation better (where the courses taken by users not influencing their information seeking behavior), it is best to explore information behavior and information seeking behavior models propounded by scholars such as Wilson, Kuhlthau, Dervin and Ellis; only to mention the most noted few. By looking into aspects of information behavior in these models, we can determine the factors that played considerable amount of importance in the way people seek information.
Taking the information behavior model proposed by Wilson, we can see that when the need for information arises, the person would turn to either one of two sources, i.e. humans and information systems. Reflecting the findings from above literature, it can be said that human is the first and foremost information source for those seeking information. Information systems would be the second choice after the information seekers have discussed some ideas about their needs with others.
While using Dervin’s sense-making approach model the context of information seeking such as physical, social and psychological as well as time were included. This reflects the actual situation in the studies above, where convenience, speed and ease of use are the determinant in choosing information sources. Even in psychological context, the inner core of a person i.e. their personality trait and embedded study approach might change when time constraints played a part.
I would say that the existing models are really useful in the course of understanding information behavior of users even if there are also other opinions as to improve the models such as those proposed by Godbold (2006) and Niedźwiedzka (2003) which attempted to surpass the constraint of sequential stages in Wilson or Dervin models and to construct a more general model to include information behavior of managers which is said to be more specific in their information seeking, respectively.
Besides the models discussed above, attention should also be given to other models related to information searching especially in its relation to information retrieval systems such as the models proposed by Saracevic, Ingwersen, Belkin and Spink. In the realm of human communication there are also models to be taken into consideration (Wilson 1999).
Based on brief discussion about the literature and Wilson’s and Dervin’s models above, I would suggest the library to consider the importance of communication between lecturers and supervisors with their students. In this regard, cooperation between faculty and librarian are very important, because the popular channel of information for students is their lecturers or supervisors. Library should be mentioned more in their discussions with students, and they are the most righteous person to usher the students to make use of various sources provided by the library which is being built using taxpayers’ money (including their parents’).
Librarian should be more faculty-oriented with provision of as many librarians as the number of courses offered by university, and their services must be tailored to faculty needs.
Library websites should also be more faculty-based or course-based, because the students are complaining about the difficulty to access information that is tailored to their needs and the difficulty to use different databases, especially so for undergraduate students of the University of Malaya.
While in passing I challenge myself to suggest having more focused libraries with research purposes in mind, with divisions according to faculties or courses, where the students would not be overwhelmed by the massive storage of library materials in such a huge place that they would not know which section to go to and fail to decide when they are running against time.
This is to counter the effect so profound in today’s life where the pace of living has been extremely fast, and information seeking behavior has also been shaped by this quick, and speed-wise mentality. Thus the so-called Google generation can be persuaded to return to the libraries where the wealth and quality information actually resides and provided for them.
REFERENCES
George, Carol, et al. 2006. Scholarly use of information: graduate students' information seeking behaviour. Information Research, Vol. 11 no. 4 (272) (accessed March 12, 2008).
Godbold, Natalya. 2006. Beyond information seeking: towards a general model of information behaviour. Information Research Vol. 11 no. 4 (July) (accessed March 13, 2008).
Heinstrom, Jannica. 2004. Fast surfing, broad scanning and deep diving: the influence of personality and study approach on students' information-seeking behavior. Journal of Documentation, Vol. 61 no. 2 (accessed March 13, 2008).
Mohd Saad, Mohd Sharif and A N Zainab. 2007. Information search and use of computer science and information technology undergraduates. Paper presented at the International Conference on Libraries, Information and Society, ICoLIS 2007, 26-27 June, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
Niedźwiedzka, Barbara. 2003. A proposed general model of information behaviour. Information Research Vol. 9 no. 1 (October) (accessed March 13, 2008).
Wilson, Tom. 1999. Models in information behaviour research, Journal of Documentation 55, no. 3: 249-270 pp. (accessed February 29, 2008).
The author of this web site is a final semester MLIS student at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She is currently in charge of a one-man-library in a marine consulting company in Petaling Jaya. Previously she worked as an assistant librarian at a National Library of Malaysia village library in her hometown, Machang, Kelantan.
Technology is so much fun, but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin - American social historian and educator, 1914.
Apart from information retrieval there is virtually no other area of information science that has occasioned as much research effort and writing as "user studies".
Tom Wilson, 1981.
In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.
Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973), U.S. biographer.