A Survey on strategy and information seeking skills of the students of Payame Nour University- Qom branch

The purpose of this research is to identify the information seeking skills of Bachelors students studying at Payam-e Noor University, Qom Branch. The research method is descriptive survey and in order to gather data, the questionnaire was used. Among all statistical population, 200 students were chosen through random cluster method. In order to carry out the statistical issues, the SPSS software was used. The most important goals of the students in terms of information seeking are preparing their assignments (29%), accessing to updated information (23%) and carrying out the scientific researches. The textbooks (38%) and the periodic journals (19%) were used as the printed information resources, by the students, respectively. Among the facilities used for seeking information, use of internet web with 42% and e-mail with 21% as well as chat rooms with 18% were with the highest frequency values. The tools used on the internet by the students were search engines (26%), meta search engines and information portals (17%), using URL(12%), and introducing sites in newsletters and journals (11%) are also mentioned. For accessing published information, lack of knowledge about using the library indexes (20%) was featured with the highest frequencies. 94% of female students and 84% of male students have problem using printed and internet information resources. The students used internet with an average frequency of 33%. The most important problem in accessing to internet is the slow speed and the traffic of the net. There is a need for more education for using internet as they mentioned. Also, there is a meaningful relationship between the sex and use of internet as well as the Bachelors students studying at Payam-e Noor University, Qom Branch and modern information science technologies.