Research into the Application o f Information Technology Developments to the

The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a number of conferences and published reports on the application of information technology developments to the academic communication system. The Electronic Campus Conference held in October 1988, sponsored by the BLR&DD, aimed to explore key issues for the future information environment of the electronic campus, to share experience and to create greater awareness of developments in the UK and the USA. The papers focused on the implications of IT for the nature and methods of teaching and research across all disciplines; economic issues of the new information systems and services; organisational implications of the electronic campus; strategic planning for information resources and an extensive overview of trends in IT. The Information Technology and the Research Process Conference held at Cranfield in July 1989, jointly sponsored by the BLR&DD and the Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Science, addressed the opportunities and potential problems resulting from the way information technology was revolutionising the traditional research process (Feeney and Merry, 1990).

A second study of the scientific information system in the UK, jointly funded by BLR&DD, the Royal Society and the Association of Learned and Professional

Society Publishers, commenced in 1992 (Royal Society, 1993) after a preliminary survey indicated the need for such a study (Meadows and Buckle, 1991). It reported on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, the major changes affecting it, the economic issues and ways in which users can become better informed about the system and its effective use. The publication of the Follett Report, which led directly to the establishment of the Electronic Libraries projects, has already been mentioned: its recommendations included the use of IT to improve delivery of information through increased use of electronic library services, the exploration of different models of intellectual property management and the encouragement of new methods of scholarly publishing. The substantial volume of papers produced as part of the work of the Information Technology sub­ group (HEFC, 1993) contained details on the background to the IT related recommendations in this Report. Towards the end of the project period (April 1995), the JISC published an issues paper (JISC, 1995a) which, after wide consultation, formed the basis of the JISC Strategy to 2001 (JISC, 1996). Among the issues identified to ensure information systems and IT could be fully exploited in the higher education community were the following needs: to expand the reach of the network to the home and workplace and to strengthen links with industry and other education sectors; to provide adequate multi-media personal workstations for faculty and student use; to engender the necessary culture change and training to support the preparation of multi-media teaching material and electronic text book and research material; to promote and improve the exploitation of IT in the creation of virtual laboratories for teaching and research use; to provide high quality databanks of research material for effective analysis; to prove technology and engender the necessary culture change to improve electronic information delivery and the development of the virtual library; to make greater use of information systems to achieve the effective management of higher education institutions; to provide necessary training and awareness throughout the community and to receive feedback on requirements to help ensure technology led initiatives are in tune with the necessary culture change.

In addition, much investigative work has been done on the application o f new technology to improve communications within the UK academic community. The BLEND Project explored and evaluated the use of an electronic communication network as an aid to writing, submitting and refereeing papers and as a medium for

other types of scientific and technical communication (Shackel, 1991). This was an experimental programme. The BLEND system was both the object of, and stimulus for, a considerable amount of research besides that forming the main part of the experimental programme (Pullinger and Shackel, 1991). This research included the reading of electronic journals, proofreading, refereeing and the presentation of text and graphics on the screen. Also, the system was used by a number of communities other than the Loughborough Information Network Community. Project Quartet explored the use of electronic mail, computer conferencing, online databases and automated document delivery services (Tuck et al., 1990). However, the major portion of Quartet’s work was design and feasibility studies, mainly consisting of developing and evaluating prototype systems.

Ellis et al., in their comparison of the information-seeking patterns of researchers in the physical (physics and chemistry) and social sciences, reported the relatively minor impact which developments in information technology had had on the information-seeking and communication activities of the three groups (Ellis et al.,

1993). The employment by researchers of electronic means of identifying references constituted a minor part of their information-seeking activities and their employment of electronic communications in the communication of research was “virtually non-existent” . This endorsed Meadows and Buckle’s (Meadows and Buckle, 1991) finding that the impact of electronic communication on the scientific communication of academic research in the UK in the early 1990s was negligible. In follow up studies to the 1993 Royal Society study, Rolinson et al. (1995; 1996) have examined the use of IT and information usage in the biology field by surveying samples from four institutions. They found that differences in usage and changes in information handling depend on the institution and specialism involved.

The Information Access Project (Barry, 1997), which commenced at the same time as this research project, was a longitudinal, qualitative study of the information and research behaviour of ten established academics and eleven newer researchers (post-graduate students and post-doctoral and assistant researchers) in the mathematics and education departments at King’s College, London. The project investigated the use of traditional and electronic information behaviour in the context of research over a four year period. Problems encountered in evolving a

research methodology (Barry, 1995) were: incomplete knowledge of basic operating variables, the complexity of information-seeking, the largely implicit nature of research and information skills, the difficulty in detecting the impact of IT systems on research; and the difficulty of explaining learning and take-up of IT. The problems encountered in the process of learning and take-up are related in reports on progress (Squires et al., 1995; Barry and Squires, 1995).

Research into user acceptance of, or resistance to, IT systems spans a range of areas, including technology design and implementation, human-computer interaction (HCI), and information systems (IS). Dillon and Morris (1996) have reviewed theoretical approaches and models to IT design and implementation and concluded that, to date, there is no “overarching theory that will encompass both the explanation and the prediction of user acceptance as well as provide the tools for ensuring that any design process leads to an acceptable product” .