During the fall of 2000, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JSTOR retained a professional research firm to conduct an anonymous survey of faculty at institutions of higher education in the United States. The objectives of the study were: (1) to learn how U.S. academics perceive and use electronic research resources, (2) to begin to learn about their attitudes about the current and future impact of technology on research, teaching, and their use of the library, and (3) to gain insight into their awareness of issues related to archiving. More than 4,000 faculty completed and returned the survey.

Background

JSTOR retained Odyssey, a San Francisco-based market research firm, to conduct the study. Established in 1992, Odyssey's focus has been studying the changing attitudes of consumers toward electronic technologies and new media. Odyssey's experience tracking changing attitudes toward technology, just as the World Wide Web exploded on the commercial scene, struck us as extremely relevant and transferable to our objective to evaluate how similar technologies are impacting academics.

The data for the study were gathered from responses to a detailed questionnaire mailed to over 32,000 randomly selected humanities and social sciences faculty at colleges and universities in the United States. Respondents were asked to indicate their discipline or field of study, as well as the number of years they have worked as a faculty member. Most respondents did provide this information, allowing us to analyze responses by academic discipline and by the age of the respondent.

General Findings

More than 60% of faculty are comfortable using electronic resources, believe a variety of electronic resources are important to their research, and consider electronic databases to be invaluable. The resources they use most are online catalogs, full-text electronic journal databases, and abstracting and indexing databases. They expect that they will become increasingly dependent on electronic resources in the future.

One of the important resources for faculty members is the online catalog. Over 70% of all respondents consider their library's online catalog to be "very important" to their research. However, the importance of this resource varies significantly by field. Just over 60% of the economists consider their library's online catalog to be "very important," while nearly 90% of humanists regarded it as such. In fact, for humanists, their home library catalog is the most important electronic resource to them by a large margin.

Attitudes about the Role of the Library

Faculty continue to rely heavily on the library. When asked to rate how dependent they are on the library for their research, 48% indicated that they are "very dependent" on their library. However, this reliance is expected to decrease in the future. When asked how dependent they think they will be in five years time, 38% expect that they will be "very dependent." According to the responses, this reliance on the library is not about the library as a "place"; in fact, many faculty can foresee a future when they would never go in the library. 44% thought the following statement described their view very well: "Before long, computers, the Internet, and electronic computer-based archives and databases will allow academics to conduct much of their research without setting foot in the library." These results also varied by field, as 52% of economists indicated this statement described their view very well, compared with only 22% of the humanists.

Along these same lines, faculty were asked to rate the importance of three broad library functions or roles. The responses varied considerably by field for the library's gateway function. Consistent with their view of the online catalog, humanists seem to utilize and rely on the library much more for their research. 80% of the humanists rated the library's role as a starting point for research as "very important," while, by contrast, only 48% of economists considered this library role to be "very important."

"How important is it to you that your library provides each of the following functions?"

	All	Economics	Mathematics	Humanities
Gateway	65%	48%	56%	80%
Archive	77%	72%	74%	84%
Buyer	80%	77%	83%	83%

*percent rating each function as 'very important'

Attitudes About Archiving

One interesting question relating to JSTOR is whether academics will be able to trust an electronic repository in place of having paper volumes stored locally. Faculty indicated fairly strongly that they continue to want libraries to maintain paper copies. 48% of respondents said that the following statement described their view "very well": "Regardless of what happens with electronic archives of journals, it will always be crucial for libraries to maintain hard-copy archives." Once again, the social scientists seemed to hold a different view from the humanists, as just 24% of the economists thought this statement described their view "very well," while 63% of the humanists agreed strongly with it. Further, most academics do not condone discarding paper back runs. More than half of the respondents (56%) indicated that they did not want to see "hard-copy archives discarded and replaced by electronic archives."

Finally, faculty were asked to indicate how important it is that electronic journals be preserved for the future. 76% indicated that the following statement described their point of view "very well": "With more and more journals becoming available electronically, it is crucial that libraries, publishers, or electronic databases archive, catalog, and protect these electronic journals." In this case, academic discipline matters not at all, with more than 70% of the respondents agreeing strongly with this statement.

Conclusions

There is evidence that faculty's use, perception and attitudes about electronic resources vary considerably across disciplines, but there are several aspects on which all faculty seem to agree. First, electronic resources have become an invaluable tool for research, and faculty expect to become even more dependent on them in the future. There is also strong agreement that preserving electronic journals for the future is extremely important. Finally, faculty do not believe that a reliable solution for electronic preservation is in place, and in general, would like hard copies of journals retained to provide backup protection, although social scientists seem somewhat less concerned about this issue than academics from other disciplines.

One area where faculty attitudes seem to vary most greatly is in how they view the library and its role, particularly with respect to providing assistance with access. Humanists depend heavily on the library to assist them in seeking research materials - to act as a starting point for research - while social scientists value the library much less for this role. Moreover, it is expected that libraries will play a less important access role in the future as more and more resources can be accessed directly by faculty from their desktops. Again, this expectation is more strongly felt among social scientists than humanists.

Given how much humanists rely on and value their libraries, one cannot help but wonder if library resources are being directed toward the academic disciplines where the library's services, especially with respect to access, are actually most valued. In thinking about future investments in providing new access tools, libraries might give careful consideration toward serving the constituents that value and depend on them the most.

This article summarizes a presentation given by Kevin Guthrie entitled "What Do Faculty Think of Electronic Resources" given at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Spring Task Force Meeting, Washington, DC, April 9, 2001.

Last updated on September 8, 2006