Information Seeking Behavior of Scientists
Part 1. Background Information
1: 1. What is your department?
Please write your answer here:

2: 2. What is your campus box (CB) number?
Please write your answer here:

3: 3. What is your major field of research?
Please write your answer here:

4: 4. What is your position?
Please choose only one of the following:
Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor
Research Staff/Adjunct
Post graduate/Fellow
Doctoral Student
Masters Student
Other

5: 5. What is your age?
Please write your answer here:

6: 6. What is your gender?
Please choose only one of the following:
Male
Female

7: 7. Do you have access to the internet in your
Please choose all that apply
Office or lab
Department or campus
Home
No internet connection

8: 8. How far from your office (or the location where you most often work) is the campus library you use most often?
Please choose only one of the following:
Same building
1/4 mile
1/2 mile
1 mile or more

9: 9. In a typical week, how many hours do you spend reading information relevant to your work?
Please write your answer here:

10: 10. How many articles have you published in refereed journals in the last 5 years?
Please choose only one of the following:
0 - 4
5 - 9
10 - 14
15 - 19
20 or more

Part 2. Types of Resources Used
11: 11. How often do you use the following types of resources as a primary source of information for your research?
For each item, please select one of the values on the following scale
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Never Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily
Books
Journals
Preprints
Attendance at conferences
Conference proceedings
Web pages
Online databases
Personal communications
Other (describe below)

[Only answer this question if you answered 'Other (describe below) - Daily' or 'Other (describe below) - Weekly' or 'Other (describe below) - Monthly' or 'Other (describe below) - Quarterly' or 'Other (describe below) - Annually' to question '11']
11.1: (continued from 11)
Please describe your Other resource
Please write your answer here:

Part 3. Keeping current
12: 12. What are the five (or fewer) most important individual sources (journals, reviews, web sites, listservs, etc) that you read to stay current in your field? Please list your answers (specific titles, listservs, web sites, etc) in order of importance (#1 most important).
Please write your answer(s) here:
1.:
2.:
3.:
4.:
5.:

12.1: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

12.2: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

12.3: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

12.4: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

12.5: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

13: 13. Do you use any current awareness services, or alerts, to help you know when new literature becomes available that is relevant to topics that interest you? If you do, please list them in order of importance (#1 most important).
Examples: PubMed Alerts, ISI Personal Alert and Reference Update, INSPEC Current Awareness, Faculty of 1000
Please write your answer(s) here:
1.:
2.:
3.:
4.:
5.:

Part 4. Searching for Information
14: 14. What are the five (or fewer) most important individual tools that you use to search out information? Please list your answers in order of importance (#1 most important) and indicate how often you read them.
Examples: ISI Science Citation Index, PubMed, ArticleFirst, Google, colleague, specific listserv, CiteSeer, BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts, ERIC, INSPEC, Mathematical Reviews, ACM Digital Library, Physics Abstract, online books (NetLibrary, Safari, StatNetBase, etc), online journal search engines (Kluwer, Link Springer, etc)
Please write your answer(s) here:
1.:
2.:
3.:
4.:
5.:

14.1: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

14.2: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

14.3: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

14.4: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

14.5: How often do you read X?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Annually Quarterly Monthly Weekly Daily

15: 15. In a typical month, how many articles did you retrieve to read from the following sources? Please indicate (or estimate) the number for each of the following sources.
Please write your answer(s) here:
[Electronic] Personally subscribed journal:
[Electronic] Lab subscribed journal:
[Electronic] Library subscribed journal:
[Electronic] Open Access (or free) Journal
or Institutional Repository or Digital Library:
[Electronic] Web site (author's web site):
[Electronic] Personal digital library:
[Electronic] Copy of colleague's electronic copy:
[Print] Personally subscribed journal:
[Print] Lab subscribed journal:
[Print] Library subscribed journal:
[Print] Copy of colleague's print copy:
Interlibrary loan:
Document delivery dervice (describe below):
Other (describe below):

15.1: (continued from 15)
What document delivery service do you use?
Please write your answer here:

15.2: (continued from 15)
Please describe your Other method for obtaining articles
Please write your answer here:

16: 16. How confident are you that you are finding everything you should on your topic?
1 = Very Not Confident, 5 = Very Confident
Please choose only one of the following
1 2 3 4 5

Part 5. Personal Article Collection
17: 17. Do you maintain a personal article collection?
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No

[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question '17']
17.1: Indicate the approximate size of both your print and electronic article collections
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
1-49 50-99 100-499 500-999 1000+
Print
Electronic

[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question '17']
17.2: How often do you utilize your personal article collection?
Please choose only one of the following:
Never
Annually
Quarterly
Monthly
Weekly
Daily

18: 18. Do you maintain a personal bibliographic database for print and/or electronic references?
Examples: EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, etc
Please choose only one of the following:
Yes
No

[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question '18']
18.1: Which software do you use?
Please choose only one of the following:
Biblioscape
EndNote
Nota Bene
Papyrus
ProCite
Reference Manager
Other

[Only answer this question if you answered 'Yes' to question '18']
18.2: Of the articles you have in you personal article collection, what percentage of them have entries in your personal bibliographic database?
0% - 100%
Please write your answer here:

19: 19. Of articles you have in you personal article collection, on what percentage of them have you made some sort of notes?
0% - 100%
Please write your answer here:

Part 6. Searching and Using Information
20: 20. If given the option, how would you prefer to search for information?
Please choose only one of the following:
Print versions of databases and journals
Electronic versions of databases and journals

21: 21. If given the option, how would you prefer to read retrieved information (journal articles, etc)?
Please choose only one of the following:
Print (hardcopy) only
Electronic (computer) only
Both/it depends

22: 22. How often did you visit University libraries in person in the last 12 months?
Please write your answer here:

23: 23. If you visit the library, what are your reasons for going?
Please choose all that apply
Photocopy materials
Get assistance from a librarian
Use computers
Perform searches
Read current journals or other materials
Quiet reading space
Meetings
Browse
Pick up/drop off materials
Other:

24: 24. What determines your choice of journals for the publication of your work?
Please choose the appropriate response for each item
Insignificant Significant
Ability to include links, color, graphics, multimedia
Audience
Author having to pay cost of publication
Availability on campus
Editorial board
Page charges for long articles or color figures
Speed of publication
Standing of journal in your field
Support of open access to journal articles

25: 25. Which interface would you rather use to begin your search process?
Please choose only one of the following:
Google search page
Your library's home page

26: 26. In your opinion, what are the successes of your library?
Please write your answer here:

27: 27. In your opinion, what are the shortcomings of the library, and what new or different services you would like to see provided?
Please write your answer here:

28: 28. Imagine that you could have information made available to you in any form you desired. What one thing would you change to improve your access to, or use of, scholarly information?
Please write your answer here:

Submit Your Survey
Thank you for completing this survey. Please fax your completed survey to: .