ABSTRACT

This study investigated the information seeking behavior of medical doctors in Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Kaduna. The descriptive survey method was adopted, with the questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. Of the 212 medical doctors in the hospital, 164 of them where available for the distribution of the questionnaire, and a total of 121 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved. Responses collected were analyzed using cross tabulation. The research revealed that medical doctors seek information in order to treat their patients, for self-development, and for recreation. The major information channels or access tools they use are their colleagues, universal search engines and their personal collections. They rarely use the library or scholarly oriented search engines. Medical doctors use all the sources of information, namely; primary sources, secondary sources, tertiary sources and automated sources. But they prefer to use the Internet, research works and reference materials. The search strategies they use include the Internet access, discussing with colleagues and consultation of manual library catalogues. However, they prefer to use online search strategy (Internet access). The research also revealed that the medical doctors scarcely use the Boolean operators because most of them do not know how to use the Boolean operators. The research recommended that medical doctors should be taught how to use the OPAC terminal and the Boolean operators for information retrieval. And that the special libraries attached to hospitals should be well equipped.