It can be said that the birth of the library and the perfection of library science, the primitive instinct of human thirst for information really contributed. It stands to reason that the library should conduct a very in-depth study on readers' information seeking behavior to meet the needs of readers. Not really. Limited by manpower or technology, libraries often have no in-depth understanding of readers, and the focus of work is often inside the organization rather than outside it. Even with the rapid development of information technology today, it is still a question whether the library has more powerful tools and capabilities than before and whether the mutual understanding with readers has increased.
Information technology has changed the way readers look for information and the way libraries serve. It is necessary for a library to know the information search behavior of readers before planning its service projects. Unfortunately, most of the discussion about the library's electronization focuses on the types of resources that science and technology can provide, which easily gives people the impression that the traditional services of the library have become redundant in the electronic environment. Many discussions about electronic libraries also emphasize resources, but lack attention to librarians and services (Note 2). Unfortunately, the application of information technology has not made the library pay more attention to service and readers.
We need to know more about readers, not collect more electronic resources. To bring the benefits of information technology into play without wasting costs, the first step is to understand readers. Only by understanding readers' thoughts, the way they look for information, and the way of academic communication behind them. Can they really provide the information they want and need? This paper takes the graduate students of Institute of Physics as the main object, supplemented by foreign research on readers in the same subject field, discusses the similarities and differences of readers' information seeking behavior at home and abroad, and puts forward some discussions and questions, hoping that through these preliminary efforts, more attention can be paid to the relationship between readers' information seeking behavior and readers' service.
Second, the definition of information seeking behavior
Information seeking behavior is an immediate and continuous process, which also involves psychological cognition. Generally speaking, it can be divided into four aspects: the generation of information demand, the elements of completing information seeking, the procedures of information seeking and the reasons that affect information seeking behavior.
First, the generation of information demand.
Information demand is one of the basic needs of human beings. Basically, the generation of demand is to realize the existence of the problem and collect information to solve the problem, that is, to confirm that there is a gap between "I know" and "I must know" (Note 3). Professor Chen believes that information demand is an abstract concept, which explains why people seek, find and use information. Krikelas divides the demand for information into immediate demand and delayed demand, that is, continuous demand and discontinuous demand, which are used to describe the continuity or finality of the problem (Note 4).
The types of information requirements can be classified according to the following criteria:
(A) according to the purpose of division
1, application requirements (application requirements)
It is a pointer to find solutions to some specific problems.
2. Nutritional requirements.
Refers to the need to maintain one's own ability.
(2) In chronological order.
1, urgently needed
Refers to the demand that must be met immediately. This demand is usually aimed at some specific problems.
2. Deferred demand.
It can be said to be a potential demand; Because it is still in a state of confusion and ambiguity, it will not take immediate action to obtain information satisfaction.
(3) According to the continuity of points
1, continuous demand (continuous demand)
It means that after solving a problem, new problems come one after another, and then demand is generated.
2, Discrete Needs (discrete needs)
It means that a problem is solved and it comes to an end.
(4) according to performance or not.
1, expressed demand
F.W. Lancaster believes that the needs expressed by readers are information orders; It usually does not fully reflect the inherent information needs. Because the demand for performance is transformed and restated, it is easy to get away from the real internal demand.
2. Potential demand
The potential demand of readers is the real information demand in readers' minds; This potential demand can't be clearly expressed in words, and it is a vague state, but it can best represent the real internal demand and can't be ignored (Note 5).
Other researchers, when discussing the occurrence of information demand, mostly focus on the situation of uncertain or conflicting knowledge, or realize that their knowledge has some problems that are not enough to solve abnormal situations, or their concepts are not harmonious, which will produce information demand. (Note 6) According to robert taylor's previous research, Belkin, Oddy and Brooks constructed an information seeking model, which is based on the "irregular knowledge state (ASK)" of information seekers and used to explain the process of information demand. The model divides information requirements into four levels (Note 7):
1. Visceral hierarchy requirements:
I have realized the existence of information demand, but it is still very vague.
2. Conscious demand level:
Requirements can be characterized, but they are still in an unknown chaotic state.
3. Formal level requirements:
It is possible to discuss the problem clearly and in a reasonable and clear state.
4. Requirements for revision level:
The problem can be transformed into a vocabulary acceptable to the retrieval system in a formal way.
Generally speaking, the task of information seeking is to turn the first three of the above four stages into the fourth demand.
Second, the reasons that affect information seeking behavior
In the real world, there are many reasons that affect readers' information seeking behavior, which can be roughly divided into the following reasons, such as cultural system, political system, academic organizations, consulting groups, formal organizations, psychological factors, legal and economic factors, formal information systems and other factors. From another perspective, there are five factors that can affect information seeking behavior:
(1) Communication method:
The way users communicate when looking for information will affect the results. Whether by oral, conference, telephone, letter or information system, each has its own advantages and disadvantages (Note 8).
(2) Personal factors:
Including age, qualifications, education level, subject background, role and function of work, all of which will affect information seeking behavior, whether in the process or in the result.
(3) Cost/benefit and ease of obtaining information:
The former refers to the hope of obtaining the expected income at the expected cost; The latter hopes to obtain information with the least effort and cost, and emphasizes the accessibility of information. These two factors are the two most often considered when choosing the way to seek.
(4) Working environment:
Because of the different working environment, such as the difference between research institutions and production institutions, or the difference between schools and administrative units, there will be differences in information seeking behavior (Note 9).
Three, the elements and conditions of information seeking.
For an information searcher, what kind of knowledge to search for, or what information sources are around the searcher, is quite complicated. Generally speaking, information seekers can be divided into experienced and unfamiliar. Usually, experienced users have rich retrieval experience and have attended training courses of libraries or system providers, while unfamiliar searchers usually lack such training (note 10).
Generally speaking, a searcher needs to have four kinds of knowledge, namely, general knowledge, information retrieval system knowledge, information search task knowledge and subject knowledge to be searched. In addition, some people simplified the required knowledge into three levels (note 1 1):
(1) Conceptual knowledge: transforming information requirements into searchable query actions.
(2) Semantic knowledge: construct a query action for a specific search system.
(3) Technical knowledge: enter the query under specific search conditions.
To sum up, in the process of a seeker's search, there may be 1 1 kinds of sources or catalysts for information, which are around the seeker, and the situation may be as follows (note 12):
1. What happened inside the seeker?
(1) The reason for starting the search.
(2) Views on information retrieval system.
(3) the purpose of the search.
(4) the special target of the search.
(5) Knowledge about the search target.
(6) Knowledge about search system.
2. Produced by the Explorer himself:
(1) Language expression of the search target.
(2) The actual retrieval language of the expression target selected by the user.
3. What happened outside the Explorer:
(1) Guidance mechanism to help users, such as help window.
(2) The retrieval vocabulary adopted by the system, such as control vocabulary.
(3) Information actually collected and provided by the system.
Four. A program for finding information
The steps of information search are basically a dynamic process, which is deeply influenced by the nature of each search task. As far as procedures or steps are concerned, there is not much difference between the various statements, and their spirit and gist are the same. Generally speaking, the process of seeking information can be divided into six steps (note 13):
(1) startup phase:
Information Seeker realized that he needed some knowledge or understanding. These requirements are unclear, uncertain, and the subject and access are not defined.
(2) Selection stage:
Information seekers begin to define specific topics and explore the best way to meet information needs.
(3) Exploration stage:
Information seekers have begun to seriously explore the theme and collect information. But there is still some confusion, because the information received is chaotic and even contradictory, and I can't clarify it myself.
(4) formulation stage:
The most important thing at this stage is that the seeker begins to establish the focus he wants to explore, and the uncertainty disappears. Searchers are also beginning to evaluate the information in their hands, rather than just collecting information.
(5) collection stage
The focus of information seeking task is very clear, and information seekers only collect information related to clearly defined topics at this time.
(6) Demonstration stage:
In this final stage, the search for information has been completed, but the success still depends on other factors. At this time, the seeker's attention will turn to summarizing, combining, organizing and reporting the information obtained.
In addition, some people divide the stage of information seeking into seven steps: judging what information is needed, defining information demand, selecting information source, transforming information demand into concrete concepts, setting it as retrieval strategy, implementation strategy and evaluation strategy (note 14). But we can say that this is not much different from the six-stage program mentioned above, and it is a continuous process from wide to narrow, from vague to clear, from demand to actual operation.
Research on Information Search Behavior of Science and Engineering Postgraduates
Although information seeking behavior can be restored, investigated and studied, the ways and concepts of information seeking in different disciplines are often very different, and they are also deeply influenced by changes in academic exchanges, involving members who have different views on how to find information.
The main interviewees of this paper are the graduate students in the master's and doctoral classes of the Institute of Physics, to study the characteristics of their information-seeking behavior and to go deep into the communication context behind them. In order to fully understand the information-seeking behavior in physics and related disciplines, this paper also discusses the research on information-seeking behavior in physics and related disciplines abroad in order to get a comparative effect.
I. Information Seeking of Foreign Physics Postgraduates and Teachers
Although librarians in natural science libraries have benefited a lot from the progress of information technology, and applied technology to organize information, provide retrieval and provide rich information, the ability of natural science graduate students to identify, find, divide and effectively use information is still a problem. Therefore, in ALA's report, it is also suggested that the research focus should be on the cultivation of information literacy, and readers' information ability and progress should be measured by methods (Note 15). In this case, the librarian of the University of Oklahoma investigated the information literacy and ability of natural science graduate students in the university, including 2 1 person in physics and astronomy.
There are some noteworthy points in the survey results. When graduate students were asked how much time they spent searching for information on average, 47% replied that they spent an average of 20 minutes to more than an hour searching for information every day. When asked when information was needed, 47% of the answers were in special projects. When graduate students are asked how to collect information, about 30% of them look for information by author's name, OPAC keywords and important second-hand data. Another 25% answered through periodicals, textbooks, professors' offices, classmates and other places; In addition, up to 50% of the reference books that answer journal papers are the best sources of information, and 36% people think that professors can give them a lot of rich information, but they also know that professors are too busy to help them. When asked about the difficulties encountered in finding information, about 3 1% said that the difficulties included not knowing the correct keywords, the internet being bad, the database being too complicated, and the books not being on the shelves. There are also 42% graduate students who know that online databases can help them find information effectively, but the proportion of them who think that UnCover and interlibrary loan are helpful is not high. When graduate students are asked about their opinions on various guidance services in the library, about 45% of them have attended guidance courses, although the proportion is less than half, about 83% of them have consulted librarians when consulting materials, and they have a good impression (Note 16).
In fact, not only graduate students, but also professors in universities have different views on the combination of various bibliographic guidance and teaching practice in libraries. Perhaps it is because university librarians and teachers don't understand each other's roles and expectations (note 17). According to the survey conducted by the University of Waterloo and the University of Western Ontario, the proportion of physics teachers who think their students need to participate in library bibliographic guidance activities is far lower than that of teachers of kinematics, chemistry, nursing and medicine. In teaching practice, the proportion of physics teachers telling students to go to the library to find information is not as good as that of other subjects (note 18).
Second, the information seeking of graduate students in the Institute of Physics.
In this part, we interviewed the graduate students in the master's program of the Institute of Physics of Tamkang University and the graduate students in the doctoral program of the Institute of Physics of National Taiwan University, and learned about their information-seeking behaviors and attitudes. Of them, 1 person had a face-to-face interview, and the rest had a telephone interview (note 19). The questions asked by these graduate students include the following aspects:
(1) Where will they get the information?
(2) What points will they consider to obtain information?
(3) Are you satisfied with the quality and quantity of information, and do you feel frustrated or frustrated?
(4) Impressions on various information services, lectures and bibliographic guidance of the library.
Basically, the answers of these graduate students are quite consistent. Although the research direction is different, the information seeking direction is roughly the same.
Generally speaking, since the university library is the heart of the university, it must try its best to meet the information needs of readers. According to this criterion, the library also provides readers with various "channels", such as OPAC, information retrieval tools, open-shelf stacks, periodical catalogues and so on. However, the results of our interview show that when physics graduate students are writing their papers, there is actually a gap between the way they collect information and the "goodwill" envisaged by the library. In fact, they seldom make use of the various information services carefully arranged by the library. As far as graduate students in physics department are concerned, their information seeking behavior in the library is often unexpected when they are writing their papers. Usually, there are five ways to solve their information needs:
(1) First, consult the abstracts of one or several journals in the professional field, and then look for other relevant journal documents from the abstracts, such as Physical Review and Chemical Physics Express.
(2) Find other useful related documents from the textbooks or reference books at the back of the periodicals designated by the professor.
(3) Learn about important journals of several disciplines directly from professors or classmates, and then browse and search directly.
(4) As for the part of network resources, I learned that there are important professional websites available through professors or peers.
(five) to participate in seminars or lectures, and bring essays and handouts.
In terms of the quality and quantity of information, all graduate students are satisfied with the information they have obtained, and think that there are not many cases of frustration, in other words, they think that their information seeking behavior is still successful. It is worth noting that all the graduate students did not attend the bibliographic guidance course in the library. Even if they turn to the librarian, they only ask some simple questions, such as the printer doesn't work and the book isn't on the shelf.
Fourth, discuss the phenomenon.
Judging from the above four kinds of information seeking behaviors of physics graduate students, we can find that almost none of them have gone through any process of active seeking, and their information sources are all from teachers and students in the field, not from their own active seeking, and many "good laws and good intentions" in the library are useless. For example, in the first item, they only use a few kinds of journal abstracts, and rarely use various journal indexes in Chinese and western languages, such as the Index of Journal Papers of the Republic of China and Unveiling. Let me talk about the second item first. They expand their literature collection from the bibliography behind the textbooks, but this is a "citation pearl growing" in the information retrieval strategy, while other retrieval methods only use keywords at most, and they have never used other retrieval methods or channels. This means that the various online databases, CD-ROM databases and other information retrieval tools ordered by the library at a high price every year have not been effectively used by them, which is a pity. Another example is the third item. They only use several periodicals told by their teachers. Important journals in these professional fields are called authoritative journals. Although the use of authoritative journals can effectively grasp important information, it is easy to miss and lose important information if the scope of literature retrieval is not expanded. From the perspective of bibliometrics, authoritative articles may not be published in a few authoritative journals, so it is extremely inappropriate to find only a few important journals. Finally, fourth, in the application of network resources, they are still only looking for a few known professional websites, and have not effectively used various integrated network resource retrieval tools to expand the scope.
By analyzing the information-seeking behavior of the above graduate students in physics department, we can find that their behavior is different from the service provided by the library. In other words, there is a gap between the various information services provided by the library and the information-seeking behavior of readers. For example, graduate students in physics department can find information without indexing, which is quite different from the traditional mentality of librarians who attach importance to secondary materials and reference books. This can also explain why many researchers think that libraries can't help them.
In fact, it can be seen from the situation of universities at home and abroad that the library's understanding of readers is insufficient. Our preference for how members of each discipline disseminate information and collect information may not be enough; Generally speaking, the characteristics of academic exchanges can be divided into the following disciplines (Note 20):
1. Physical Science: The research methods used in this field are highly consistent with the exchange vocabulary. There are very standardized methods, processes and research purposes, which can be described in accurate words. The communication process attaches great importance to the latest research reports at all stages of the research process.
2. Humanities: It does not attach importance to verification and observation like natural science, and the research process and objectives are not always described accurately. On the contrary, it extends, explains and studies the background behind the goal. The process of communication depends more on retrospective data.
Third, social science: between natural science and humanities, it does not attach importance to interpretation and context like humanities, but it is not as accurate as natural science; At the same time, it introduces many quantitative and accurate research methods like natural science, but its research objects are difficult to be specific and measurable. It can be a subject with the characteristics of the above two fields, and it is also a field with rapid literature growth recently.
4. Art design: attaching importance to imagination and creativity requires skills of independent operation. The requirement for information does not insist on the latest things, but attaches importance to getting inspiration through communication with peers and developing originality through interpersonal communication and ideas (Note 2 1).
In fact, with the development of information technology, libraries are more confused about how to spread and collect information from various disciplines. The author believes that what often happens is that sometimes readers are underestimated and sometimes readers are overestimated:
(1) Over-underestimate readers: In today's developed information, many readers often have many channels to obtain information, and they may be more proficient in the Internet than librarians; In addition, readers' ability to master their own subjects is far better than that of librarians, which makes librarians have to feel ashamed. Foreign research also shows that when librarians and readers query the same subject, although the amount of information found by readers is not as much as that of librarians, the degree of application is more than that of librarians (Note 22). In other words, although the recall rate of librarians' retrieval results is high, the accuracy is not as good as that of readers.
(2) Overestimate readers: Information technology has greatly changed the way of academic communication, which makes libraries often think that the way readers seek information must be very modern when they are fascinated. In fact, it may not be so. Katz pointed out that even though the invisible college has been formed, readers of many academic institutions still have many similarities with ordinary people in the way of collecting information (Note 23), which can also be proved in the previous analysis of the Institute of Physics of National Taiwan University abroad.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) conclusion-information dissemination and the significance of library service
Library is a service industry that provides information. For readers, how to collect information is not only to make readers more satisfied, but also for the cause of the library. In order to keep up with the times, the library has to take many necessary measures, such as changing the operation configuration of the library, providing remote retrieval and document delivery. To cope with the drastic changes in the way of academic information dissemination and collection. However, the academic world is still full of things written by many scholars that no one wants to read, while many people want to read things that no one has written (Note 24). Does the library know its readers well enough and perform its communication duties well?
In addition, the funds of university libraries are increasingly scarce, the amount of books published is increasing year by year, and the authorization fees for various databases or retrieval downloads are also quite high. According to ARL's estimation, libraries currently spend 8%- 14% of their budget on electronic news services. Around 1994, major academic libraries in the United States 108 spent $59 million on automation-related business, another $23 million on electronic resources and more than $4 million on document delivery (Note 25). If we don't know enough about readers' behavior of spreading information and seeking information, we will only feel more difficult, because if we don't know what readers want and how they want it, we can't judge which services need to be provided or strengthened, and the key point to help libraries save waste is to know readers.
Libraries should understand how readers' information behavior is influenced by information technology and study the changes of their academic communication methods, instead of arranging all electronic and non-electronic resources together unilaterally, which will only live up to the advantages brought by information technology. In my opinion, in the future, libraries should pay more attention to readers' information dissemination and seeking behavior, and apply new methods (such as data mining) for analysis and research. After all, information is not the object of our service, but the reader.