Evidence
Summary
University
Engineering Faculty Depend on Scholarly Journals, Web Resources, and
Face-to-Face Consultations to Help Them with Research
A Review of:
Engel, D.,
Robbins, S., & Kulp, C. (2011). The information-seeking habits of engineering faculty. College & Research Libraries, 72(6),
548-567.
Reviewed
by:
Laura Newton Miller
Science and Engineering Reference Librarian
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Email: laura_newtonmiller@carleton.ca
Received: 30 Apr. 2012 Accepted: 18 June 2012
2012 Newton Miller. This is an
Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share
Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
Abstract
Objective – To study
the information-seeking behaviour of engineering faculty.
Design – Online
survey; Purposive sample.
Setting – Engineering
departments of 20 large public universities in various regions of the United
States.
Subjects – 903
engineering faculty members (including 35% professors; 24% associate
professors, 23% assistant professors, and 17% ranked as adjunct faculty,
instructors, lecturers, professors emeriti and
“other”).
Methods – 4905 researchers were sent an email
invitation to complete a 12-item survey with open and closed questions. Email
addresses were gathered from university websites.
Main Results – 96% of those
surveyed find access to online scholarly journals (current and backfiles) as very important or important. 71% believe
access to the physical book collection is very important or important. 56% feel
that access to electronic book collections is very important or important.
(Further analysis revealed a difference between newer and older faculty- 62% of
newer faculty and 52% of faculty in field for 16 or more years think electronic
book collections are important). Print subscriptions to journals are important
to only 37% of respondents, and providing space to conduct research is
important to only 36% of those surveyed. Besides attending conferences and
scanning journals, face-to-face discussion with students and colleagues was a
key resource for faculty for keeping current in the engineering field. 81% seek
information at least weekly to prepare for lectures, about 74% at least monthly
to conduct research or write publications, and 77% at
least monthly to remain current in their field.
73% visited the physical library fewer than five times in the past year,
but researchers were surprised that almost half (47%) rated assistance from
library staff as important or very important. 70% see interlibrary loan
services as important or very important.
Conclusion – Engineering
faculty rely on scholarly journals, Internet, and other electronic resources
for their research. They depend on face-to-face consultations with students and
colleagues. The physical space of the library is less important.
Commentary
Research
papers studying engineers usually focus on them as practitioners, as a
comparison to scientists, or as a comparison between practitioners and faculty.
This study focuses completely on the engineering faculty member’s information
needs in a large university setting.
Using
the EBLIP Critical Appraisal Checklist, it was determined that a survey was an
appropriate tool for this kind of research and there was face validity in the
study design. The methods were clearly explained and the survey was included at
the end of the paper, making it easily replicable for further study.
A
response rate of 18% is a little low (903 responses out of 4905 invitations).
Having a purposive sample of only large research institutions makes one wonder
if results might have been different with a bigger response rate that included
smaller institutions. A definition of
“large” would have been beneficial for readers, and it would be interesting to
discover if needs differ between faculty of smaller and larger universities. A
description of trends by geographic area would have been useful. It is also
unclear if more respondents were from one university than another. How evenly
distributed were the results among institutions? Could this have affected
results?
Emails
taken from institutional websites can sometimes be quite out-of-date.
Contacting administrators from engineering departments to forward the survey to
faculty may have yielded results from a more up-to-date list. Perhaps faculty may be more likely to respond
to a survey sent from someone they know, as opposed to an email that may have
gone straight to their junk folder.
The
results confirm findings from other studies that engineers rely heavily on
online resources for their information needs. It was interesting to see that
71% of respondents feel the physical book collection is either important or
very important, yet very few actually visit the physical library. Faculty loan
periods can vary among institutions, so perhaps they are coming in fewer times
because of longer loan periods with online renewal options. Depending on
interlibrary loan options, it is possible that books are being delivered
straight to their offices, negating the need to visit the physical library.
There seems to be a difference between younger and older faculty’s views on
e-books. Future studies regarding how engineers use e-books, and whether there
are differences between how various formats are used for everyday work needs
will be important for librarians in understanding this user group.
Librarians
face difficult financial decisions when purchasing resources in a variety of
formats with shrinking budgets. This study reinforces the fact that engineering
librarians need to figure out ways to stay relevant when dealing with patrons
who rarely visit the physical library.
Providing online resources at point-of-need is one way to do that. This
paper helps engineering librarians to better understand their faculty by
knowing electronic access to journal articles, monographs and other online
sources are important in research and teaching.