Research on Information Seeking Behaviour: An Attempt to Bridge What Users Need and

What Libraries Could Offer

Imilia Binti Ibrahim Sabariah Binti Abd Samad

Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)

What I have for you today…

• Library and User• Research on Information

Seeking Behaviour• Our case: UiTM Sarawak

users• Conclusion and

Recomendation

2

Library and users… never been in the same page???

3

Users

• Are normally clueless on what to expect from the library

• Always jump into the easiest route to success

• Would always blame the library when they could not find what they want

4

Libraries? (that refers to the managers… better known as librarians)

• Always try to provide latest and most popular services

• Thought that the more complex the services… the better they are

• When one person ask for something, they thought… well we should provide this for everyone

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How to make these two meet?

• By understanding each other… or actually the service provider should understand the users…

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Why Research on Information Seeking Behaviour?

• Everyone will have their own way of using information

• How they seek for information would also be different from each other

• The best way to get some clue on their needs and attitude towards information is by doing some research about it

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Well… where do we start?

• Let see… it is basically a simple quantitative research

• To get some idea, there’s a lot of researches on the topic out there…

• Find one or two that could be your example

• And start with your own

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Our pilot study… UiTM Sarawak experience

• We prepared custom set of questions for UiTM users (well we didn’t pluck from the sky, therefore we did some literature search)

• We distributed questionnaires to users which includes– Students (288 Answered)– Academic Staff (23 Answered)– Non Academic staff (19 Answered)

• And our research shows some answers to our questions…

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Why people need information?

233 239

109

169

0

50

100

150

200

250

Research Work GeneralInformation

Teaching andLearning

Reading andknowledge

10

239

Materials that they need…

Types of Materials Total No. Of Respondents

Abstracts 120

Full Text Articles 265Technical Documents 80

Statistics 48

Graphs and Charts 45

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Their preferred way to search for information…

Preferred Way to Search for Information

Total No. Of Respondents

Ask the Librarian 131

Internet Search Engine 311

Online Database 210

Books 253

Reference Sources 232

Periodicals 207

12

Tools that they use to find information

Information Tools Total No. Of Respondents

Library Catalogue (OPAC) 179

Search Engine 284Indexing and Abstracting

Journal / Database72

References from a Book 190

References from an Article 176

Book Reviews 109

13

When and where…Where and When Total No. Of Respondents

In the Office During Office Hour 59

In the Office After Office Hour 12

At Home After Office Hour 92

In the Library During Office Hour

96

In the Library After Office Hour 60

Others 3

No Answer 8

14

Why people go to the library…

Reason Total No. Of Respondents

Borrow Books 224Read Books / Magazines/

Newspaper172

Use the Internet 135

Use the Discussion Rooms 69

Watch TV 64

15

Their perceptions towards library services…

  Satisfactory Good

Information Skills Class 130  

Circulation   177Reference 133  

Internet 119  

Discussion Rooms / Studio 130  

Printing 118  

OPAC 128  

Online Databases 133  

Inter-Library Loan 113  

Fax 115   16

Problems faced when searching for information…

188

120

3073

53

63

124 Materials Not Available

Insufficient Time

No Help for the Staff

Information Overload

Information Scattered

Lack of Information Skills

Obsolete Information

17

188

And for the conclusion….

Well that’s it from me….

ThAnK yOu VeRy MuCh FoR yOuR aTtEnTiOn