Current Trends in the Use of Information and Documentation Sources by Students
Current Trends in the Use of Information and Documentation Sources by Students

Summary/Abstract: In the context of increasing the amount of information and documentation structures, we notice a change in students' orientation to information obtained from on-line sources. In the education and documentation activity of the students are used various information as format: printed (books, courses, journals), digital, audio, multimedia. The recommendations for the individual study refer to thematic bibliographies, scientific reference works in the field, doctoral theses, official reports, etc., but also to electronic information sources: cd/dvd, video recordings, electronic books, databases, motors search, platforms and portals. A study conducted in University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, reveals an increase in the past years of the preference and use by students of electronic documentary sources, to the detriment of the printed ones. Frequently, this focus on online sources can cause a number of impediments that students encounter in identifying relevant information for a domain. There is a real difficulty in dealing with the avalanche of information and studies on a chosen topic and poor education in the use of on-line scientific documentation structures. The negative effects of this trend could be, among other things, the loss of relevant information for the field, the tendency to form a distorted image of a subject, to use information from unverified sources, and the increase in plagiarism, and rather the orientation towards conclusions already drawn to the detriment of training of critical scientific thinking. This shift in interest in the use of electronic resources determines the need for increased accountability in online publishing and a better adaptation of teaching and learning methods and resources in university education. The paper aims to investigate students' current trends in online documentation and information in order to improve the quality of education in documentation and information, to facilitate access to relevant information in the scientific field, and to improve the teaching-learning process.

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