The Information Need Of Scientific Researchers And The Servicing Strategies Of The National Agricultural Library

The needs for information and services of the agricultural scientific research users from the National Agricultural Library under the IT network conditions were surveyed with well designed questionnaires, and the users' characteristics, library information services and utilization of documentation resources were studied. The results revealed that, the library users were dominated by young people as 62.2% of the users were at the age between 18 and 30 years old and 51.4% of them had the education background of degree of Master of Science. Among the library users, the graduates studying in the graduate schools and the scientific researchers were the two largest groups, which accounted for 59.2% and 34.3% of the users respectively and indicated the high intellectual level of the scientific research users of the library. The library service survey showed that the attitudes and the skill of the librarians were the most satisfactory and the borrowing procedures, open hours and the catalog system were the three having relatively more dissatisfied users although all users were generally satisfied with the basic services provided by the National Agricultural Library. As for the information need, the professional periodicals and books were the major document source of types for the scientific research users, especially the current issues of the periodicals. The dissertations were utilized with a going up trend. In addition to the paper publications, the website electronic full text database was preferred by the users because of the inquiry convenience, less restriction over time and space and the quick transfer. The users ranked the website full text database as the first option to meet their information need from library, followed by the website abstract database while some of the traditional services such as thematic document service and foreign document searching agent had lost the users' interest. The documentation utilization data indicated that, the food science books in Chinese language and the biology books in English were most frequently utilized with the average book use efficiency of 55.3% and 8.1% respectively in 2002-2004. Both Chinese and English current periodical issues of the biology had the highest reading frequency of 18 and 4.1 times per issue respectively. The study also revealed the users' barriers in acquiring information. The acquaintance to the information resources in the internet, the information acquiring ability and the language barrier from the users' aspect, and the internet environment, the availability of internet information and the quantity and quality of internet services from the library services aspect were discussed. It was concluded that the combination of service modes of integrated information service, personalized information service and knowledge service should be the new development of library service in order to meet the information needs of various scientific researchers for specific services of National Agricultural Library under IT environment.