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Drake faculty responses rating the library's role as a research information gateway to be "important" or "very important" closely align with national responses.
When asked about more specific starting points, however, we see some interesting differences emerge.
When you explore the scholarly literature to find new journal articles and monographs
relevant to your research interests, how do you most often begin your process?
*PubMed, arXiv.org, ADS (Astronomy Data Services), SSRN, SciFinder Scholar, and "all of the above"
were entered as Other free text by Drake faculty.
A higher percentage of Drake faculty begin with the library website compared with the national average (33% vs. 25%), and fewer Drake faculty begin with Google Scholar or a search engine than the national average (28% vs. 37%, combined).
One task the library might consider is determining whether starting with Google Scholar and search engines is due to a lack of awareness of relevant library resources, or because faculty simply have better luck locating new scholarly literature in their discipline with those search tools.
