Application of radio frequency identification technology to study library users' information-seeking behavior

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has application to research on information-seeking behavior of library users. A user study was conducted to track traveling paths using the RFID system. Three undergraduate students carried a reader/writer and explored information sources in a library to complete a given set of tasks. Data regarding the traveling paths and information sources used were collected. The information offers insight into participants' information-seeking patterns. For example, all participants started in the online public access catalog zone; they used secondary sources for fact-based tasks more than for topic-based tasks. In addition, they spent the most time exploring the general book zone. A small percentage of tag recordings had to be removed or created because of errors in transmission readings; however, the procedure and results of the experiment were not affected. The results suggest that RFID technology provides data accurate enough to explain library users' information-seeking behavior, and can be applied to future studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.