The following article (preprint) was recently posted on the “portal: Libraries and the Academy” website.
Title
Understanding the Information Behaviors of Doctoral Students: An Exploratory Study
Authors
Monica Moore
University of Notre Dame
Emily Singley
Boston College
Source
“portal: Libraries and the Academy”
Scheduled to appear in Vol. 19, No. 2 (2019)
Abstract
This exploratory study seeks to understand how the research experiences of humanities PhD students influence their information behavior. The authors interviewed 10 participants from two academic institutions multiple times over several months. The study used open-ended, unstructured interviewing techniques in an attempt to avoid the introduction of library bias. The authors found that the information behavior of PhD students is driven by their need to understand and follow a scholarly dialogue. Resource discovery was heavily influenced by people, and resource use was varied, distributed, and unpredictable
Direct to Full Text Article (16 pages; PDF)