A Study of Information Seeking Behaviour of Animal Husbandry Researchers in Central India

Abstract

As new technologies and information delivery systems emerge, the way in which the researchers search information to support research, teaching and creative activities is changing. To understand different aspects of researchers’ information seeking behaviour, this paper surveyed among 400 animal husbandry researchers including Veterinary colleges, Dairy technology colleges and Fishery science colleges in central India. A web-based, in-depth questionnaire was designed to quantify researcher’s information searching, use and storage behaviours. Descriptive statistics are reported. Additionally, analysis of results is broken out by institutions to compare differences among universities. Significant findings are reported, with the biggest changes due to increased utilization of electronic methods for searching and storing scholarly content. Generally speaking, researchers in veterinary colleges are rather similar in information seeking. However, due to different academic unit structures and different library services at these institutions, they demonstrate some differences. Another notable trend is that novel forms of scholarly communication such as collaborative information sharing technology are evolving gradually.