Being Where Our Faculty Are: Emerging Technology Use and Faculty Information-Seeking Workflows

Abstract

Academic libraries frequently consider students’ high usage of certain technologies when deciding what services to offer electronically, but less research has been done on whether faculty also use any of these technologies. This study surveyed faculty at two very different institutions, a liberal arts college and a Research I university, about the technologies they use or might consider using, with a particular focus on information and/or communication-related technologies. The results show that faculty do use many of the technologies that previous studies have associated with students.

KEYWORDS:

• faculty
• technology
• Google
• Wikipedia

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Liz Rodrigues, formerly Reference & Instruction Librarian at Grinnell College, for all of her help in developing and administering this survey, and to Catherine Rod, Special Collections Librarian at Grinnell College, for her suggestion to include “I don't know what this is” as a possible response.