Role-Related Library Use by Local Union Officials

A questionnaire was distributed to local union officials in Illinois in order to determine the officials' use of various types of libraries, their satisfaction with their experience in using the libraries, the problems they encountered in library use, and their opinion of various ways in which libraries might be made more useful to them. They were also asked whether they had had training in how to find information. Respondents to the survey used more than one type of library, and their union role had an impact on which type they were likely to use. They used different types of libraries to find different types of information. In general they were satisfied with their library experience, but they found library collections inadequate for their needs. Respondents who had had training in how to find information appeared to use libraries more but differed little in the frequency or types of problems encountered from those who had no training. When asked their opinion on various suggestions for improving library service to local union officials, they preferred measures that gave greater emphasis to increasing labor materials in library collections. The findings of this study, combined with those of our earlier study (Chaplan & Hertenstein, 2002), suggest that an information seeking model developed by Wilkinson (2001) may be useful in explaining union officials' information seeking behavior.