194 INTEGRATED INFORMATION Information seeking behavior: factors that affect the behavior of Greek astronomers Hara Brindesi † and Sarantos Kapidakis ‡ † Ionian University. Archive and Library Sciences Department. Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing., 49100, Corfu, Greece. hbrinde (at) eugenfound.edu.gr ‡ Ionian University. Archive and Library Sciences Department. Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing., 49100, Corfu, Greece. sarantos (at) ionio.gr Abstract What factors could affect the information seeking behavior of people despite of their being occupied in the same domain? This study aspires to shed some light on this question by examining, describing and exploring three aspects of information seeking behaviour of astronomers in Greece. The distinctive characteristic of this research is that an intradisciplinary approach has been adopted and the astronomers were grouped in various categories according to their respective characteristics such as, academic status, subfield-research area, and affiliated institution, all being regarded as factors that can affect behaviour. The analysis of the results revealed that although some similarities exist, there are significant variations in the behaviour of these different categories of our participants, e.g. among scholars with different academic status or research area, and the sources used or their tendency to submit papers in eprint archives. Keywords Information seeking behaviour, user studies, Greek astronomers. I. INTRODUCTION Information seeking behavior studies have always been of the main concerns of librarians and information scientists. The area of our study is the research related to information seeking behavior of astronomers, with an orientation to the concept of the domain-analytic paradigm in information science, which states that «the best way to understand information in IS, is to study the knowledge-domains as thought or discourse communities, which are parts of society’s division of labor» (Hjorland 1995). Accordingly, we narrowed our research focus on astronomers, and particularly on astronomers of the area of Athens, for in-depth domain study and we detected their habits and needs. This article presents part of the findings of the survey study which constitutes the first step of a PhD thesis. The main aim of this particular work is to shed some light on the question of what factors could affect the information seeking behavior of people despite their being occupied in the same domain. We worked on this aim by examining three aspects of information seeking behaviour of astronomers in Greece: a) the importance they place in keeping up-to-date with current developments, b) the information sources they mostly use, and c) their e-print depositing behaviour. Astronomers had been divided into various groups according to the following traits: academic status, subfield-research area of astronomy, and affiliated institution, all being regarded as factors that can affect behaviour. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Unfortunately, there is not much bibliography concerning the information seeking behavior of astronomers. What we have noticed is mainly studies about scientists in general, with no particular emphasis on information about astronomers and their seeking behaviour. For example, as Tenopir (2005) mentions, «preferences of physicists are often studied, but astronomers are less often singled out for study. Furthermore, we have not noticed works that study differences among people of the same discipline, apart from that of Jamali and Nicholas (2008). The two researchers examined two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up-to-date and methods used for finding articles. They concluded that «there are significant differences among subfields of physics and astronomy with regard to information- seeking behaviour in terms of their reliance on different methods used for keeping up-to-date as well as methods used for finding articles. To this end, this study aims to fill the gap by studying seeking habits, with a focus on similarities or differences among astronomers, showing respect to their academic status, research area, or affiliated institution. III. METHODOLOGY The population of our study was restricted to the area of Athens, so we came into contact with the 18 professors of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Athens, as well as the 41 researchers of the Academy of Athens and of the National Observatory. In our sample we also included the 25 PhD and the 22 MSc students of the University of Athens. The total number of people that constitute our population is 106. Initially, thirteen (13) face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted. The analysis of these interviews, as well as the study of the corresponding bibliography, helped us to set the online questionnaire, which was filled in by 71 recipients (68.8% response rate).