A massive, multi-year study of the information-seeking habits and preferences of faculty members at Missouri State University has concluded. The third and final section of the study was recently completed. The official title of this study is “The Scholarly Information Discovery Processes of Missouri State University (MSU) Faculty.” Some of the findings and reports from earlier phases of this study are available in BearWorks, the institutional repository of Missouri State University. 

Among the findings of Section 3, the final phase of the study:

1. Among the three Google products offered as information containers, respondents placed the highest value on Google, followed by Google Books, and finally on Google Scholar.

2. Specific Web sites continue to have an enduring track record based on their relatively high scores among the 38 posed information container types.

3. Open access databases score almost as well as fee-based or licensed databases among all eleven information types posed in Question 11.

4. Faculty tend to consult more with colleagues, followed by librarians, and “other.”

5. Faculty appear to be at least as interested in the process or in the information containers involved in their information search as they are in the information type for which they were searching, if not more so.

6. In terms of search results on information inquiries, faculty tend to be more interested in recall than in precision.

7. Faculty appear to have a greater facility for detailed analysis for discrete information or specific data elements of retrieved information than for seeing the broader organization and general layout of information itself.

 

While many faculty and staff worked on the study over the years, the research team at the conclusion of the study included Andrea Miller (Associate Professor of Library Science), Scott Fischer (Library Associate I), and Lynn Cline (Professor Emeritus).