USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BY BIOLOGICAL RESEARCHERS

Recent studies of computer-based information-handling by scientists ha ve tended to look at such activities across all the sciences. This is true, in particular, of the recent detailed Royal Society (RS)/British Library (BL)/Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishe rs (ALPSP) survey, The present study aims to complement these by conce ntrating on the biological sciences only, It surveys the usage of info rmation technology and related factors by researchers at four institut ions - an agricultural faculty, a university school of biology, a gove rnment research establishment and a pharmaceutical laboratory. It is f ound that there are differences in usage, depending on the institution and specialism involved, It also appears that senior researchers in b iology are typically more information-active than junior researchers, but that senior/junior differences in the use of information technolog y are relatively minor, and can mostly be explained in terms of the pr essures on senior staff time. When compared with the RS/BL/ALPSP surve y, some results of the present study agree well (e.g. regarding the av erage level of online access to information). Others differ (e.g. elec tronic information usage in the pharmaceutical laboratory is higher th an the earlier survey might suggest). Overall, the present study indic ates that, though the information-handling activities of biologists ma y differ on average from other specialisms, their total spread is so g reat that most approaches can be matched by some group within the biol ogical sciences.