Information Resources Used by Academic Professors of the Unites States in the Electronic Age

Abstract

To identify what information resources the professors use to support their research activities and how they use them in the electronic age, this paper surveyed 637 faculty members from five research universities across the nation. Three questions were asked including the five most important specific resources, how many articles they retrieved from 13 channels of sources, and which search engine (Google vs. Library’s homepage) they preferred to use. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, regression analysis and binomial test were used to analyze the data. Factors including age, gender, and disciple are related to choice of particular information sources. We find that most of the faculty members still rely on electronic journals. Preferences were evenly divided regarding using library’s search page versus a Google search page.