How do our faculty approach searching for scholarly information? How do they keep abreast of developments in their respective fields?

Our faculty rely a bit more heavily on general Web search engines for conducting academic research than their colleagues at other research-intensive universities do; they rely more heavily on library databases. As their search needs become more specific, they tend to rely more on our online catalogs like Cruzcat and Melvyl, and on our journal databases.

Our faculty follow current scholarship in a number of ways, but most commonly by following peer recommendations, participating in scholarly conferences, skimming current issues of key journals, and following key scholars in their respective fields.

Our faculty expressed a concern that undergraduate students have poor research skills related to locating and evaluating scholarly information. They also demonstrated a high commitment to improving those skills as an education goal for the courses they teach.

A majority of faculty believe their students seldom or never interact with librarians, but they expressed a strong opinion that such interactions contribute to student success.

Faculty have relatively low expectations for their lower division students to use primary and secondary sources beyond assigned reading, and much higher expectations for their upper division students to do so.

Our faculty rely heavily on the library to support their research. They most highly value our work to acquire and make available journals, books, and electronic databases. They also highly value our work to organize and preserve collections.

Our faculty strongly disagreed with the proposition that resources devoted to the library should be redirected to other campus needs.

80% of our faculty collect qualitative, quantative, or primary source research data, and 71% collection digital image or media data.

Our faculty rely most heavily on the data they collect themselves, and are more likely to organize, manage, preserve their own data using freely available software. They are least likely to rely on library services to organize and manage their data.

Two-thirds of faculty have received extramural funding from a federal or public grant-making agency.

Faculty strongly support the federal mandate to make pubicly funded scholarly research and/or data freely available online.

Only 17% of faculty report a high level of understanding about the university's Open Access policy. 

Only 19% of faculty have ever attempted to negotiate terms of a copyright agreement.

We solicited 1,065 UCSC teaching faculty and emeriti and 299 of them completed the survey.