The Impact of Evolving Information-Seeking Behaviors Upon Research Libraries: A Case Study

摘要

Rapid developments in information technologies have impacted scholarly communication, teaching, and learning in fundamental ways. The time-honored practice of a community of scholars gathering on a single campus to pursue a common research interest is being challenged as the symbol of university research. In its stead there has emerged world-wide discipline-centered scholarship where collaboration and synergy are dependent upon the Internet and the World Wide Web. New research methods mine universes of data vastly deeper and richer than the print world enabled, extend inquiry into data structures more complex than the book and the journal, and give rise to new meanings of the notion of "original sources." Student learning and student behaviors are also evolving. The evident GenX penchants-for multi-tasking and group collaboration, for electronic information and self-sufficiency-also bring new challenges to all of those on campus who share responsibilities in the increasingly complex learning space that the university itself has become. This paper reflects on some of the efforts of one research library to respond to the pressures of the digital age while sustaining its efforts to build enduring repositories of the human record. doi:10.1300/J111v46n02_02