A Research On Academic Users’ Strategies In Online Information Seeking Based On The Foraging Theory

The research starts from the perspective of behavioral ecology. Under the premise of reasonable information patches division, academic users’strategies in online information seeking are analyzed based on the foraging theory. The internal mechanism of academic users’strategies choosing in online information seeking is explored. The advices and suggestions are put forward to enhance the efficiency of academic users’information seeking.This research selects 60 grade Ⅱ, Ⅲ graduate students from Southwest University for testing. In order to ensure the reliability of the data collected, a comprehensive data collection method is used in this research. Questionnaire survey method, experimental method and interview method are combined together to collect the academic users’strategies in online information seeking. The quantitative and qualitative data collected in the research are analyzed in a variety of angles. The main content and results of this study are,①Academic users’strategies in online information seeking are analyzed in three aspects which are users’information seeking skills, users’left time when seeking in a patch and plan of users’seeking menu.②The selection mechanism of academic users’strategies in online information seeking is explained from the perspective of cognitive science and behavioral ecology.③The advices and suggestions are put forward to enhance the efficiency of academic users’information seeking according to the results gained in the analysis.