A survey of engineers in their information world  

Oleh:

Ward, Martin

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Librarianship and Information Science vol. 33 no. 4 (2008), page 168-176.
Fulltext: 168.pdf (214.5KB)

Isi artikel

Reports results of a questionnaire survey of 27 Principal Engineers at Ricardo Consulting Engineers, a leading powertrain consultancy, dedicated to the design, testing and research of engines and transmissions, conducted in 1996-1997. The study investigated the degree to which these engineers use informal information sources, such as colleagues, and formal sources, such as their own and their departments' collections of notes and other literature, and Ricardo's Information Services Department (ISD), in particular its large textbase of engineering references, POWERLINK. Takes a humanist viewpoint to provide insights into the culture of a leading engineering company and the working lives of its engineers through a study of their need for and use of information, in relation to their biography, their cognitive style, and attitudes to work. A wide range of patterns of library use were revealed: ten respondents visited the library more than once a week; two claimed to be very frequent visitors; eight others claimed to use it about once a week; three said their visits followed no set patterns. The most popular reason for using the library was to consult the database but an objective test of six retrieval methods revealed a severe lack of understanding of basic retrieval techniques, which seemed to conflict with the general attitude of the engineers. Concludes by examining the values underlying the data, such as time, personality, information and communication, as a way of organizing the survey’s findings.

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