Information Behavior of Faculty Members of NSTU, Public University of Bangladesh

Abstract

The study’s main purpose was to investigate faculty members’ information searching behaviors while administering any research. This study designed an online questionnaire and printed questionnaires used for data collection. The data were analysed using several descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, percentages, and non-parametric tests, i.e., Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis. The findings showed that faculty members were heavily dependent on search engines to access information, and they have mainly used academic social media sites such as Google Scholar (n=139) and ResearchGate (n=133). Additionally, to keep up-to-date with new publications, they primarily relied on journal alerts (n=126). In the case of applying searching strategies, they used more than one keyword search and sometimes one keyword. Conversely, they do not apply proximity operators, discovery and federated tools and Boolean operators in their search techniques. Furthermore, for modifying search techniques, they used several keywords searching and utilise search engines, databases, and advanced search techniques. Moreover, the Mann-Whitney test result found no significant differences in terms of their gender regarding the types of e-resources used by them, and the Kruskal-Wallis tests found substantial differences in terms of faculty demographic characteristics of using only indexed databases, search engines, academic, social media sites (e.g., ResearchGate, and Zotero Network), current awareness services (i.e., Journal alerts, Web alerts, and discussion lists), and search techniques (i.e., Boolean operators, and Truncation).