| Summary: | The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine difficulties concerning information acquisition, use, and management experienced by graduate students in physics during their first years of research work. Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were carried out with nine doctoral students. The theoretical background for analysis of the material is based on the work of Patrick Wilson, with particular focus on the concept of cognitive authority, and on that of Lars Seldén, who has proposed the idea of an information seeking career running parallel to the academic career of the researcher. Results from the interviews indicate that most of the students, in the early stages of their information seeking careers, rely to a great extent on supervisors and more experienced colleagues when identifying material needed for the research project. In a situation where information of potential relevance is abundant and where experience and focus are not yet fully developed, senior researchers function as cognitive authorities and as guides to other cognitive authorities. As subject knowledge and experience grow, strategies for information seeking and evaluation develop and become more focused. Furthermore, the students are not yet part of the informal academic networks and are therefore dependent to a high degree on formal sources and controlled material. The difficulties experienced during electronic searches were however less than expected. In the students' opinions information search and management would be improved if all published material was converted into electronically searchable and printable full-text documents. They also express a desire for better tools and methods for importing, organizing, and indexing references in their own databases, thus facilitating access to their own collections of documents. === Uppsatsnivå: D
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