Information experiment(ation)

I recently visited my parents and stumbled upon my old microscope. And my old molecule model set. And my old electronics board. And my stacks of Scientific American. I remembered that I once considered myself a budding scientist.

Source: Screen capture from "Ready, Set, Dough" episode of Magic School Bus

I still toy with the idea of becoming a true amateur scientist; however, for the time being, I will concern myself with information-seeking behaviors of actual scientists.

There is a lot of work done on information-seeking behavior of scientists. One place to start is an annotated bibliography from Drexel on the topic by Debra O'Neill. This bibliography takes a look at articles from 1989 to 2006.

Most of the work focuses on professional scientists. Dolence and Gilmour point this out in their article, "Libraries, Information, and Amateur Scientists," noting that the information-gathering habits of those who pursue scientific interests outside of their professions are unknown. For their study, they used a survey method, which makes sense. What caught my attention in their study were the demographics. Respondents were mainly men (87%) between ages 41 and 60 with at least some postsecondary education (Dolence & Gilmour, 2006). This was also not surprising, sadly.

I'm wondering if an experiment (or quasi-experiment more realistically) could be conducted to figure out information-seeking behaviors of amateur scientists based on class or level of education. This might be too ambitious, but figuring out a way of understanding these behaviors in a way that goes beyond self-identifying would be extremely helpful. Dolence and Gilmour reached out to listservs which automatically limits their pool.

If there was a way of setting up an experiment where the participants are given the same problem (controlled variable: type of research) and selected based on social indicators (independent variable: demographic information), then it might be possible to understand what resources people turn to (dependent variable: retrieval of research/articles).

Are people who don't have an academic background more likely to go to public libraries to do research, even though they do have access to campus resources? How can amateur science be supported in low-income communities, where leisure time may be limited? There is a handful of people who come to the library where I work to do their independent scientific research on the public access computers, so I have been thinking about this issue of access for a while. 

Whether or not this would be a feasible experiment, it would be interesting. Perhaps a more targeted survey would be a better solution to figuring out how to create equitable access to important research.


References 

Dolence, T. & Gilmour, R. (2006). Libraries, information, and amateur scientists. Technical Services Quarterly 23(3).

O'Neill, D. (n/a). Information retrieval and user behavior of scientists in seeking information. Drexel University.