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Faculty Survey
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
In response to the final survey question about how access to online resources has changed how faculty work, 277 faculty (82%) offered comments. Several topics repeatedly surfaced and some of their responses are grouped thematically here to illustrate their experiences and perceptions.
Interdisciplinary nature of research
- “Our electronic resources are invaluable to my research. As I work in an interdisciplinary area, the journals I need are rarely shelved together because they span different subjects. So the retrieval of journal articles used to be a very time consuming endeavor that was mostly made up of walking around looking for things on different shelves and floors, with a little photocopying. Now I think of my library research time as reading time.”
- “It allows me to search more journals more quickly and to keep a larger number of articles in PDF version (than was reasonable in print version) for future reference. This scope is essential for my interdisciplinary line of research.”
- “I spend more time exploring works that are less obviously or less directly related to my research topic, because it's easy to locate a broader range of works and oftentimes easy to read abstracts and references to assess their relevance to my research. This has been very beneficial in identifying links between my work and work in allied fields.”
Increased efficiency
- “I spend less time searching and more time reading!”
- “It has saved an enormous amount of time and made it possible to read more widely.”
- “Enabled me to operate more efficiently and to spend my time actually using the resources rather than looking for them.”
- “It has dramatically increased my research efficiency and acquaintance with my field.”
- “I can work much more efficiently and be more comprehensive in the sources I locate and read.”
Increased productivity
- “I could not submit as many grants. With grant funding levels at 4–6% of submitted proposals I would not have achieved my current funding level.”
- “YES! Much better efficiency. Indeed I am using it this week in my NSF grant proposal. Not just to read new articles but to get all of the references correct in appropriate format, etc.”
- “I am currently submitting a proposal for an NEH grant, roughly $40K, that will rely almost entirely on this kind of digital resource.”
- “Completely changed the way I work by increasing my productivity. I don't waste time finding articles. I get them online and spend more time reading them.”
How electronic resources have changed how they work
- “It has completely changed the way I peruse the literature. I can evaluate far more papers and more deeply because I have immediate access to the original text. I can also traverse the literature much faster and follow chains of citations. Finally, because I can save the electronic versions to my computer, there is no need to spend time copying, and recall is instantaneous. It is one of the biggest time savers in my life.”
- “This has changed the way we all work immensely. Browsing newly published literature is quick and easy rather than slow and arduous, which means I can read more broadly. Basically, I don't have to factor in the time needed to ‘find and access’—almost all of my literature time is spent actually reading.”
- “Can evaluate what's useful and what's not much more quickly, and can therefore focus reading/analysis of sources much more efficiently.”
- “Especially valuable for me are full-text resources covering books and periodicals printed in the 18th and 19th centuries. When full-text searches are possible across a large archive of historical material, I can vastly increase the efficiency of my research.”
