Encouraging and Facilitating the Use of EIS

Abstract

The impact of IT networks and electronic information services and sources on academic information users is potentially enormous, and permeates all of the arenas of research, teaching, publishing and communication. The change provoked by the emergence of electronic information services (EIS), is only one of many changes taking place in higher education, which affect the nature of academic jobs and roles, research and knowledge, student profiles and learning. In an environment characterised by several drivers for change, it is important that information professionals and policy makers are able to make well-informed decisions concerning the development, provision and funding of EIS. To this end, JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee, established a User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to investigate and profile the use of electronic information services within higher education in the United Kingdom. This article discusses aspects of the methodology of the Framework, and preliminary findings from the first annual cycle of the Framework. Findings are based on interactions with 1500 users, including academic staff, LIS staff, and students. Executed through 3 strands, the framework methodology uses an array of quantitative and qualitative approaches to lend a variety of insights into user behaviour with EIS, factors that encourage the use of EIS, and those that act as barriers to the effective integration of EIS into the learning experience.