The new wave of university researchers and libraries

This paper examines changes in attitudes and behaviours of the new wave of researchers (early career researchers) regarding the academic library and its functions in seven countries around the world. It documents trends and establishes the direction in which things are heading. Data were collected from over 100 researchers from the sciences and social sciences through interviews, repeated annually for 3 years. Findings show that attitudes towards libraries and their use have barely changed over the years and they remain largely invisible to ECRs, although in the case of China, attitudes are distinctly negative and use declined and in Poland sentiment appears to be rock bottom. Libraries, when used are really mainly used for one purpose only, which is to get hold of the full text of papers. The danger is that ECRs are decoupling from libraries.

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