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Related Experiment Videos

Coping with a MEDLIB-L service outage.

C D Brown1, S MacCall

  • 1School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa 35487, USA.

Bulletin of the Medical Library Association
|February 12, 2002
PubMed
Summary

MEDLIB-L subscribers employed different coping strategies during a service outage. Those with urgent information needs sought alternatives, while others waited for the service disruption to end.

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Area of Science:

  • Library and Information Science
  • Information Behavior Studies

Background:

  • MEDLIB-L is an electronic mailing list for medical librarians.
  • An unexpected six-day service outage occurred in August 1999.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To assess the coping strategies of MEDLIB-L subscribers during a service disruption.
  • To understand how information needs influenced coping mechanisms.

Main Methods:

  • An online survey was administered to MEDLIB-L subscribers.
  • The survey was conducted after the six-day service outage.

Main Results:

  • Two distinct coping strategies emerged based on information needs.
  • Subscribers without pressing needs waited for the service to resume.
  • Subscribers with urgent needs utilized alternative information-seeking methods.

Conclusions:

  • Most subscribers missed the MEDLIB-L service and its support.
  • The outage was generally perceived as a minor stressor.
  • Significant coping strategies or secondary assessments of alternatives were not widely required.

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