The Role of the Academic Librarian in the Sciences of Food and Health

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the information seeking behavior of faculty and graduate students in the sciences of food and health. We compare three food science research sources through quantitative and qualitative research methods of interviews, observational studies, and surveys. We aimed to discover what motivates scientists’ information seeking, how they search, what barriers they experience, and how they critically evaluate information sources. We explored faculty perceptions of literature review practice in the field and by their students, their preferences for training and best practice in order to improve research quality. Recommendations for librarians supporting food science and related departments are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Information behaviour
• food science
• librarian
• literature review
• library management
• information seeking

Acknowledgments

As a non-profit educational charity, IFIS (The food science and health database publisher) funded this research in order to determine food and health science researchers’ information seeking behaviors, priorities, and to gain insight on strengths and weaknesses of research sources including their own database, FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts). This information will improve understanding and assist IFIS and others in better supporting the community.

Thank you to all the participants of our interviews and observational study for their Food Science expertise and valuable contribution to developing information literacy. CCB and MHK designed the study in collaboration with IFIS. CCB and MHK undertook the observational studies and interviews for this paper and analyzed the results. CCB analyzed the interview data from the international targeted survey. CCB and MHK both drafted and edited his paper.

Disclosure Statement

IFIS funded this study and are the owners of the FSTA database which featured in this study. CCB and MHK are independent researchers funded by IFIS to undertake the study. IFIS had an input into the design of the study, helped disseminate the invitation to research, but did not analyze the results and had no participation in the writing of this paper.

Notes

1. The Guerrero-Bote & Moya-Anegón study found that the world food scientific production has shown sustained growth of 145% at a rate of 9% per year, or compared with the rest of worldwide scientific production it is a relative of 35%.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by IFIS [Information behaviour grant 2018].