The Survey of Academic Librarians: Usefulness of Leading Internet Tools & Sites (Survey Highlights)
A new fee-based report from Primary Research. However, some interesting info from the findings is available for free.
This study presents the results of a survey of academic librarians about their use of leading internet tools and sites such as Ebay, Google, Bing, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, YouTube, SecondLife, Amazon, Wikipedia, Google Books, FLickr, Yahoo Groups, Twitter and others.
Here are a Few of the Findings From the Report:
+ Librarians between the ages of 31 - 39 found Facebook the most useful Conversely, 65% of librarians over the age of 60 had little use for Facebook.
+ Librarians in special collections and archives used Bing the least, while librarians working in circulation and public services were the most likely to say that it was useful to them,
+ 59% of respondents felt Google Books was more than a little useful; only 13% found Google Books to be of no use. Librarians working in administration and in acquisitions, collection development, and licensing found Google Books to be of the most use.
+ Librarians with either an associate's degree or a BA/BS degree indicated that YouTube was not particularly useful (64% and 57% respectively) while almost half of those with an MLS and additional degrees felt YouTube was useful.
+ Librarians from PHD granting institutions found Twitter to be the least useful (76%) while approximately 40% of staff at community colleges felt that Twitter was of use.
+ 90% of librarians under the age of 30 found Yahoo Groups not useful whereas approximately 33% of librarians in their 50s felt Yahoo Groups was a little useful to very useful in their work.
+ Contrary to stereotype, Men were more likely than women to find that Yahoo Maps was useful in their work.
+ Women were less likely than men to find Ebay useful in their work; librarians at public colleges were less likely than those at private colleges to find Ebay of use.
+ 68% of all respondents indicated that Amazon.com was useful to them in their work. 80% of librarians working in administration found Amazon to be of particular use whereas only 53% of their counterparts in special collections and archives found the same.
+ Librarians with an associate's degree were more likely to think that the use of Wikipedia should be strongly discouraged whereas those with a doctorate were most likely to feel it is an acceptable source of background information.
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