Page 171 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

170 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

3.2 Organized information sources and the information source horizon

Based on the classification of the various information sources nominated by subjects, Savolainen
divided the information sources into 6 categories: people (e.g., friends), broadcast media (e.g.,
radio and TV), printed media (e.g., newspapers or magazines), Internet-based media (e.g.,
E-mail), organized information sources (e.g., public libraries) and others (Savolainen, 2007).
Our study asked interviewees to nominate their information sources in their daily life and invited
10 specialists who were professional information science scholars to endow a weight to each
information source according to their richness and quality. Through the experts’ investigation, we
found that among all the information sources, the organized information sources are one of the
best information sources. Considering that the usage of the qualified information source is the
main channel to information richness, the usage of organized information sources is always closely
related to the information richness.
Table 1 shows the top ten information sources nominated by interviewees. Among these
information sources, acquaintance, friends, colleagues and family members should be classified
into the type of information sources related to people, TV is an information source related to the
broadcast media, newspapers and books are information sources related to printed media and
surfing Internet at home or work place are information sources related to Internet media. Compared
with Savolainen’s research, there is no organized information source nominated into top ten
information sources of interviewees in this study. Our research mainly focuses on residents living
in the western part of China, and moreover this area is underdeveloped and the public cultural
conditions are poor compared with other places of China. Moreover, most of interviewees live
in the remoted rural area. Public libraries and related public information services are unavailable
to these villagers. Thus, the organized information sources are deficient. In this area, even in the
town, public information service is far from covering all the residents, and thus local area is short
of organized information sources. In this situation, it is impossible for local residents to nominate
this kind of information sources.

Table 1. Top ten information sources nominated by interviewees
Ran- Information Number of Percentage Ran- Information Number of Percentage
kings sources nominators (%) kings sources nominators (%)
1 TV 102 50.50 6 Friends 79 39.11
Surfing Internet
2 Newspaper 100 49.50 7 75 37.13
at work place
Surfing the
3 92 45.54 8 Cell phone 68 33.66
Internet at home
4 Books 88 43.56 9 Colleagues 64 31.68

5 Acquaintance 79 39.11 10 Family member 58 28.71