Abstract :
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
