Information‐seeking behavior of the social sciences faculty at Kuwait University

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the information‐seeking behavior of the social sciences faculty at Kuwait University.

A survey method was used for this study. The data were collected using a structured, peer‐reviewed questionnaire self‐administered to 77 faculty members, with 54 returns.

It was found that these respondents heavily depend on books and journals for teaching and on a larger variety of materials for research purposes. Their use of informal sources is comparatively less than formal sources. Journals and books are considered the most important sources to meet their needs. Among the informal sources, conferences, subject experts, and colleagues are given higher importance than librarians and government officials. Journals and books are used more frequently than raw data, technical reports, and manuscripts and primary materials. Their satisfaction level with all the sources is positive but higher for journals and books. The level of satisfaction with informal sources is slightly higher than formal sources. Their library use is very low with complaints about the quality of staff, resources, especially in Arabic, and access to international resources.

The research is limited to faculty in the college of Social Sciences, Kuwait University.

Understanding the information‐seeking behavior of social science scholars and developing information resources and designing systems and services that are appropriate for their needs.

This paper contributes to the very limited research literature on the topic in the Arab countries.