Information seeking and stopping among undergraduate interns

Abstract

The information seeking behaviour of student interns was investigated from the perspectives of: sources of information and knowledge used; reasons for selecting these sources; ways of verifying the appropriateness of retrieved information; stopping the search process; and the effect of locus of control and learning style on their information seeking behaviour. Results show that the internet and colleagues were the most common sources of information, while contacts outside the organisation were also important. Interns’ existing tacit knowledge ranked low as a source of information. Convenience of access to the sources of information and confidence in them were major determinants of the source chosen. Respondents with an internal locus of control were more satisfied with the types of information and with the amount of information retrieved, than those with an external locus of control. This exploratory small scale study investigates the information seeking and stopping behavior of undergraduate student interns and how individual-level psychological factors like locus of control and learning approach influences these two behaviors. The participants were 22 undergraduate information management students undertaking summer internships that ran from May to August in 2008. The study explores issues concerning: the range of sources of information and knowledge (both explicit and tacit) retrieved by student interns; their confidence in the quality of the information retrieved; whether the information was sufficient in quantity for the task; psychological factors affecting their information behaviour; and other factors that influenced students’ decisions on where to seek information, and when to stop seeking it. It has relevance for KM in Libraries and Information Sectors in the following three areas: (i) It confirms the reliance by organisational members on colleagues’ tacit knowledge to verify the relevance and accuracy of information retrieved to address significant specific tasks within the workplace, (ii) It explores the information seeking behaviour of new organisational members, as represented by student interns,

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