Industriforskning och informationssökning
en användarstudie av en grupp forskare vid ABB Corporate Research
The thesis aims at, from a user perspective, examining how a group of industrial researchers understand the information seeking in their every day work. A qualitative method is employed. The empirical material consists of open-ended interviews with in all ten researchers. All of them work at the Swiss-Swedish Technology Company ABB's research laboratory in Västerås. The thesis is based on the opinion that the scientific knowledge production has become commercialised and that the scientific communication is going through certain changes. The result shows that the information seeking is an integrated part of the researchers every day work. The importance of accidental occurrences in information retrieval is emphasised. The informal information is of importance, to create a network of contacts is therefore important. Knowledge of changes in the surrounding world and the latest scientific and technological trends is searched for on the Internet and through personal contacts. Information is also needed for getting acquaintance with new research problems, in a short period of time, since the researchers are apt to start working with new projects. To get access to scientific and technical information of high quality researchers read scientific journals, which are peer reviewed. The researchers seldom search the information in databases on their own but apply for the service to the professionals in information retrieval within the company. The conclusions are that the ability to value information is crucial. The choice of source of information depends on the situation and on what quality of the information that is needed. To explain this Patrick Wilson's theory on cognitive authorities is used.