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 survey studied user views on the electronic resources provided by Finnish research institute libraries (special libraries). Electronic resources were taken to include, for instance, electronic publications, e-books, online dictionaries and reference databases.
The respondents were first asked about their scientific discipline, whether their field of study was a new one, the extent to which there existed a consensus in the discipline regarding important research topics and theory, whether the respondents did research alone or in a group, and to what extent different publication formats (e.g. scholarly monographs, peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, handbooks) were valued in their field. The extent of using interdisciplinary publications and publications from own discipline was explored.
Next, the respondents were asked the extent of using e-resources and printed material in general and whether they would have been willing to give up printed materials (books, journals, dictionaries) if electronic versions had been provided by the library. The next set of questions charted views on the importance of various FinELib databases and resources, reasons for not having used the resources and the source from which they had heard about the resources. The respondents were asked how often they used FinELib resources, where they mainly accessed them and for which purposes they had used FinELib services.
Relating to user experience, questions charted whether the respondents thought the most important works in their discipline could be found in the FinELib resources, opinions on the kind of material that should be included in the resources (e.g. foreign scientific journals, dictionaries), problems encountered when using the resources, and training needs related to the use of the resources. Further questions probed the respondents' views on their colleagues' use of FinELib resources, on the future use of FinELib resources in general, on the strengths and weaknesses of FinELib, and general satisfaction with the resources.
Background variables included the respondent's gender, age, research institute, staff group and field of study or research.
A link to the survey was available on the online services of research institutes.