Redes eletrônicas e necessidades de informação : abordagem do Sense-Making para estudo de comportamento de usuários do Instituto de Fisica da USP

Abstract

Electronic Networks and Information Needs are integrated in order to search information seeking behavior of the academic community and to understand the impact of this technology in the university activities.Those are the issues of this dissertation, which is presented in 3 parts.First -the methodology.Second -review studies which contain the fundamentation of this work: (1) electronic networking evolution; and (b) traditional versus oriented approach to study the user needs.Third -information seeking behavior research of the electronic networking users at the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo based in Brenda Dervin's Sense-Making Approach.The electronic mail was used in order to get information from 87 users of IFUSP local network.The results were submitted to three types of analysis: (a) use of the electronic network: amount of experience, frequency and purpose of use, barriers and difficulties, amount of training and context of use; (b) search and use of information: nature and entity focus, strategy used, amount of effort, resource used, user expectation and actual uses, completeness of the answers obtained, usefulness of the answers, sources that effectível y helped to find the information; (c) unsolved information needs: failure, analysis of user's problems when their information needs remained unsolved was performed.Users were classified in 4 groups, according their performance in networking: (1) those in discovering electronic networks benefits stage; (2) those using basic functions (email, ftp and telnet) but only locally; (3) those seeking for solutions or immediate issues; (4) expert users.From this characterization and due to the user's frequencies in each of these stages, an inference of IFUSP net is done: most users are just at the communication stage, not using networks as an information source.Similarities in the information seeking behavior of those IFUSPnet users contribute to outline the community user needs characterization.As suggestions in order to improve the electronic networks use, it should develop specific studies of user needs, offer users competence program and professional in service training.

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