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Be Nimble, . . . Be Quick: Responding to User Needs Insights Gained Through an Information Behavior Study
Marshall Clinton
The information systems and services libraries offer are often shaped by subjective perceptions of the wants and needs ofcommunities served. In November 2003, the University of Toronto Library was invited to participate in a field study of the information behavior of members of the Faculty of Pharmacy. This offered a unique opportunity for us to discover the ways in which faculty and researchers use information in their day-to-day work.
The study revealed that information is used in unexpected ways, and that many faculty and researchers are ill informed about library systems and services and have difficulties using some of the library’s Web services. We found that the information systems we teach people to use in our library instruction programs are not necessarily the systems they actually use — particularly in the case of younger faculty.
While the study focused on the Faculty of Pharmacy, senior researchers in other parts of the university have confirmed that much of what was found is also applicable in their areas. The study has been invaluable, for it has enabled the library to make informed decisions about information resources and information delivery. Although some aspects of the information behavio revealed in the study are specific to the University of Toronto, some of the findings may be generalized to other institutions.
Background: University of Toronto
Canada's largest university, the University of Toronto also ranks as the country’s top research-intensive university, and offers programs in 17 academic areas. It has a total enrollment of about 63,000 students, and supports more than 85 doctoral programs and 14 professional faculties, including a major law school and a medical school affiliated with nine hospitals and medical research institutions. The university receives almost $500 million in research grant and contract support.
The University of Toronto Library has over 15 million volumes and is one of the top five research libraries in North America. It offers extensive access to electronic information resources to the entire community of the Unversity of Toronto, and operates the ScienceServer system on behalf of all 20 Ontario universities as part of a service known as the Scholars Portal. ScienceServer is the platform on which we locally load the Elsevier journals, among others. Through the Scholars Portal service, students, faculty and researchers have access to more than 6.4 million articles from more than 4,600 scholarly journals. The library also operates a local implementation of Web of Science on behalf of the Ontario universities.
Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences are among the University of Toronto’s fastest growing fields of study. The Department of Pharmacology, with about 50 graduate faculty members and an enrollment of more than 100 students, has laboratories located on campus and in nearby institutes and hospitals. The graduate program offers M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees — involving course study as well as supervised research — in alcohol and drug addiction; clinical pharmacology; neuropharmacology; drug mechanisms, signal transduction and regulation; and drug metabolism and toxicology.
These programs are outgrowing their current buildings and ground has been broken for construction of the $70 million Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building, scheduled for completion later this year. When it moves to this facility, the new Pharmacy Library will be the first at the university to make an almost complete shift from a print to an electronic collection. The field study helped, in part, shape some of the planning for this new library.
About the field study
The field study was conducted by Elsevier at the University of Toronto during November 2003 and replicates, in part, a study conducted at Case Western Reserve’s RNA Center for Molecular Biology. The primary goal was to understand scientist (end user) information tasks and motivations from the context of their everyday research activity. Interviews, walk-throughs, observations, diary studies and field data collection helped us understand and characterize scientists’ information behavior. Eighteen participants were recruited for seven principle investigator interviews, one librarian interview, eight information walk-throughs and twelve diary studies.
Data collection and analysis focused on the goals of describing scientists’ information activity, analyzing data to understand ecological constraints, and cognitive factors. Whereas usability studies evaluate user interaction with features of a specific product, and market studies assess actual market preferences and product potential, the field research approach glues together these more targeted studies with detailed models of actual information behaviors within the everyday work context. This approach provides answers to questions such as, “What are researchers doing today in these fields?” and “What future trends are found from current observations?” or “What issues and barriers might we face launching a particular product?”
Findings and implications for library services
The field study is already starting to shape the library’s thinking about collections and service. It has given us insights into information resources used and ways in which our current modes of information delivery impact our users. 
