Peiling Wang, UTK: Research-related Use of Internet-enabled Information Resources
Mood:  on fire
Notes by Christina Pikas

Preliminary study, but she believes that it will scale up. Standard deviation is very small.

Purpose
- identify interdisciplinary differences in the use of internet-enabled information resources for research (not just technology rich or poor, rather, the type and nature of the research)
- identify factors affecting use or nonuse of these resources
- influence design

Research Questions
- which internet information technologies are used in research
- who are these technologies used in information seeking (model of 6 types of information seeking (Ellis?))
- how important are each

Research Design
- indepth f2f interviews
- semi-structured questions (her guide is available ask her)
(for how does each tech type support each of the 6 of Ellis' types, plus one more type: organizing)
What percentage of your needs are met by electronic resources?
Chaining - forward or backward citation searching

Participants
Productive and active researchers (faculty and doctoral students):
Computer Science
Engineering
Information Science
Journalism
Humanities/Social Sciences (not yet complete)

In progress - 42 interviews right now

Preliminary results
- average 5-7
(sorry for the poor table)

importance	cs	eng	is	JEM
1	web	db	db	web
2	email	web	web	opac
3	e-j	ftp	e-j	database
4	dlib	opac	opac	email
5	opac	email	email	e-j

What % e-resources? Eng highest, CS next, InfoSci next....

2 outliers
1-CS prof, 100% electronic
2-Journalism prof, 98% print

Factors affecting use:
- nature and type of research
- availablity of digital archives (humanities, historians)
- accessibility of digital archives
- awareness of the resources
- usability of the internet technology
- perception of source quality and reliability
- individual preferences & constraints

strategies
do not save (search again)
do not delete (periodically discard all)
create folders and subfolders
save multiple copies on multiple machines
keep a print copy of the digital documents
work group maintained collection

Implications
- information seeking in the digital age is easier for some but harder for others
- user tools for diverse users
- revamp the metaphor of folders
- provide easy access to digital objects at an atomic level (disaggregation)

daser2005
Updated: 12/5 to add tag and picture