Information Sources of Students of Psychology

Every year, universities spend a large sum of money on databases and library sources to help with education and research. The main aim is to determine the sources of information utilized by the psychology students at Semnan University to address their information needs. This study is applied research and uses grounded theory to reveal the viewpoints of postgraduate psychology students at Semnan University. The statistical population comprised all postgraduate psychology students at the time of the study (2018-2019). Data collection and analysis were conducted until saturation point, and 50 in-depth interviews were carried out. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and MaxQDA was used for data coding. Interviewing was stopped following 40 interviews due to data saturation, although 10 additional interviews were held with the students, which led to no new data. Based on the open coding, 95 codes were identified and extracted from the data, followed by 27 codes in axial coding. Finally, 10 codes were identified and extracted from the data through the selective coding process. The results showed that the sources of information for psychology students of Semnan University are their professors, databases, research questionnaire databases, resource ordering, accessible electronic sources, the Internet, audio-visional sources, library, search engines, and professional websites. Psychology students of Semnan University used formal/informal and digital/printed sources of information. These cover many types of information. They need more bibliographic instruction on making greater use of library services prepared for them.