Faculty Use of the World Wide Web: Modeling Information Seeking Behavior in a Digital Environment Page: 84

In many ways these subjects had a love/hate relationship with the Intemrnet. They
loved the ease of access, content, speed of retrieval, and convenience of the Intemrnet. At
the same time, they were frustrated by the amount of information retrieved and by how
much of it was not reliable or irrelevant to their research request.
Most of these subjects (ten) reported that one of the ways they learned to search
the Intemrnet was by teaching themselves how to search the Intemnet. In addition to being
self-taught, others also stated they learned from a colleague or someone in the office (in
one case, a work-study student assistant). Three respondents indicated they had taken or
attended a formal course or workshop in Intemrnet searching. A tenured, social sciences
faculty member felt it was extremely easy to learn to search the Intemrnet. "A monkey can
learn it. It is not difficult." Despite his opinion, and as noted above, many of the
respondents reported problems with using search engines and formulating search
statements.
Many of the subjects wished they could learn more about Intemrnet searching
techniques. A tenured faculty member in the sciences commented that she wished she had
more time to read about and to learn more effective search strategies. This was in spite of
the fact that she had extensive experience in using the Intemrnet. A tenured faculty member
in the humanities reported that he regretted his general ignorance of what opportunities
the Web provided.
In one final comment, a tenured, social sciences faculty member hoped that the
Intemet would not create a "distortion in funding." He did not want to see the demise of
books at the expense of providing more technological applications and access.

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