During the years 1998-2011, the Finnish National Electronic Library (FinELib) carried out several surveys directed to the users of electronic resources in Finnish university, polytechnic, research institute, and public and special libraries. Users were asked how they used e-resources, what kind of e-resources they needed, how satisfied they were with the resources and what kind of development ideas they had for the service.
The Finnish National Library, FinELib, conducted an Internet survey on the use of electronic publications. The survey was aimed at researchers working in universities, university hospitals and research institutes cooperating with the FinELib consortium.
First questions focused on the type of research funding received by the respondents during the previous five years, the type of research (theoretical, empirical or planning and development) and the proportion of work time spent on several different tasks (e.g. reading scientific literature or source materials, teaching and guidance). One set of questions covered publications by the respondents, and media and language in which published. The respondents were asked about collaboration in publishing with other researchers in general and researchers from other fields of study, other organisations and abroad. The importance of this collaboration was surveyed.
The respondents estimated what proportion of the publications they needed was in electronic form, how often they read different types of publications, how they read the publications (i.e. what means they used to view them), the age of the publications and whether they read publications outside their own discipline. Information retrieval was examined with questions about the most used sources or channels when initiating a search and which sources or channels they acquired the needed information from.
The respondents were asked about using research funding to acquire electronic publications in their research projects, availability of such publications to other people, and financing of the acquisition of the publications. Views were probed on help and support wished from the library or information services of own organisation and experiences of library services abroad compared to Finnish ones.
Background variables included the respondent's age, gender, organisation, highest passed examination, work experience in research profession, professional status, scientific discipline and field of research.
An Internet link to a web questionnaire was available on the web pages of the universities and research institutes. People were also invited to participate by e-mail. There were 3,380 respondents.