Contents: I. Introduction: 1. Introduction and context of the study. 2. Information user studies. 3. User studies in social sciences. 4. User studies in India. 5. Drawbacks in user studies and need for current research. 6. Objectives of the study. 7. Scope. 8. Hypotheses. II. Concepts used in the study: 1. Attitude. 2. Information. 3. Motivation. 4. Job satisaction. 5. Dedication to job. 6. Aspiration. 7. Personal attributes. III. Research design and methodology: 1. Respondents of the study. 2. Development of the questionnaire. 3. Information source use. 4. Motivation. 5. Job satisfaction. 6. Dedication. 7. Aspiration. 8. Personal attributes. 9. Professional activities and other information use data. 10. Constraints in information use. 11. Final survey and characteristics of the respondents. 12. Statistical methods used for the analysis. IV. Results and discussion: 1. Attitude towards information. 2. Information source use. 3. ATI and information source use. 4. Environment (Institutional affiliation). 5. Education. 6. Experience. 7. Position. 8. Motivation. 9. Job satisfaction. 10. Dedication to job. 11. Aspiration. 12. Constraints in information use. V. Summary and conclusions: 1. Summary. 2. Results and conclusions. Appendices. Index.

"Information user studies have largely focused on what is overt and noticeable. This research goes into the more important latent aspect viz., attitude to information. Working on a sample of social scientists this study presents not only a scale for measuring the attitude towards information, but also examines the personal and organizational attributes influencing the magnitude of attitude. The findings of this research points to the importance of attitudinal measurement in the user research. It seems to have an intrinsic worth which may go a long way in explaining the observed source use behaviour particularly among social scientists. The user resistance could be corrected by providing incentives facilitating, among other things, a change in their attitudinal disposition to information use which in turn has shown to induce overt source use behaviour." (jacket)

[N.G. Satish is presently a Deputy Librarian at the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad.] No. 9525

Return to Library Science Catalogue