Research Practices and Information Seeking in the Agricultural Sciences: A Collaborative Approach for Developing Research Support Services.

Many academic libraries have specialized expertise and dedicated liaison roles to build services and collections to support researchers in the agricultural sciences. But as research practices evolve, are academic libraries and other information service providers addressing the changing needs of their users? Research in the agricultural sciences, like many other disciplines, is being transformed by changing methodologies, rapidly evolving technologies, an abundance of available digital information resources, shifting scholarly communication patterns, and new mandates from funding agencies. In order to better understand the disciplinary implications of these trends for research practices and information behavior in the agricultural domain, Ithaka S+R, a not-for-profit organization specializing in academic library consultancy, has partnered with nineteen academic libraries in the United States. Aimed at library and research support services for the agricultural sciences, the project utilizes qualitative research methods to examine current research practices and information needs of agricultural scientists. A series of individual, semi-structured interviews with researchers from multiple agricultural disciplines are used to identify commonalities of scholarly activities, discourses, research approaches and methodologies and scholarly information needs. The study (1) highlights information-related challenges in developing and conducting agricultural research, including the discovery, use and organization of research data and scholarly literature, and the construction of audiences and research outputs and (2) identifies the opportunities for information support services to meet the evolving needs of agricultural scientists.