Agricultural Economists in the Information Age: Awareness, Usage, and Attitudes toward Electronic Bibliographic Databases

The construction, content, and potential use of electronic bibliographic databases is discussed. A survey of AAEA members indicates that both usage and unawareness of these databases are significant; that research and government agricultural economists are disproportionately users of electronic bibliographic databases, while extension and agribusiness agricultural economists are disproportionately nonusers; that such databases average 28.9% useful citations for agricultural economics searches, though this percentage can be raised with help from a professional librarian; and that AAEA members favor having their literature citations in electronic form.