UNIVERSITY-FACULTY AND NETWORKED INFORMATION - RESULTS OF A SURVEY

Little is known about the habits or attitudes of university faculty to wards the use of networked information. In order to gain some understa nding of this matter, a questionnaire was mailed in the fall of 1995 t o all faculty in 6 different departments at 8 universities across the country. Questions dealt with accessibility to networks, submission an d/or subscription to electronic journals, use of networks for other pu rposes (such as access to data sets or searching library catalogs), an d effects of networked information on collaboration. In general, the f aculty tend to be conservative in their use and attitudes, since their institutions tend to be conservative. This is particularly evident re garding submission of work to electronic journals, which tend to be pe rceived as not contributing to instrumental goals, such as promotion a nd tenure. On the other hand, there are indications that networked inf ormation does have an impact on some faculty members' patterns of coll aboration. Specifically, there seems to be some geographic and discipl inary broadening. There are some apparent variances in responses by su ch demographic variables as gender, rank, and departmental affiliation .