Abstract:
A survey was conducted in 2013 in the Faculty of Science, University of Colombo
on the information-seeking behavior of the third year undergraduates, and part of
the findings are presented here. The specific objectives of this paper are 1) to
illustrate the Difficulties in the Information-related Research Tasks (DIRT)
encountered by the undergraduates 2) to examine the findings in the light of the
previously published research, and 3) to make recommendations to improve the use
of librarians in their information search. To study the (DIRT), twenty statements
related to six stages of the research process; starting process, searching for
information, evaluating, using, citing and completing the process* were used with
seven Likert type response categories and MS Excel was used to analyze the data.
