The Research Habits of Graduate Students and Faculty

The work of faculty and graduate students is information intensive. These researchers make heavy use of particular types of resources to support their research, teaching, scholarly communication, and current awareness. They less frequently use traditional types of reference sources, however, raising questions of why that might be and what should be done about it. This chapter examines the research practices of graduate students and faculty to understand their information needs, their information seeking strategies and the information sources they use. It also looks more specifically at researchers’ uneven use of reference sources and discusses reasons why these practices exist. An argument is made that changes must be made to the types of reference sources available to researchers, and that academic librarians must change the way they promote these resources to their constituents.