[Project] A Multidisciplinary Approach to Studying Information Needs of Gerontologists and Research Resources on Gerontology

Porject No.：NSC 95-2413-H-002-014
Peroid：2006.7-2007.10

Project Introduction

The aging population has become a global trend and the resulting issues have attracted much attention of researchers from many countries. However, the integrated study of Gerontology in Taiwan is still immature. We believe that a multi-disciplinary research resource of Gerontology, which encourage cross-field studies will be valuable.

This project is an applied research with a goal of building a comprehensive database of research resources. We have designed three stages for this project, including a survey of research resources of Gerontology, study of information need of researchers of Gerontology and an evaluation of the use of such research resources of Gerontology.

The main objective of the first stage is to extend the completeness of the study of
research resources of Gerontology. We collect many types of resources, including
periodicals, dissertations, government programs, laws and regulations, statistics,
overseas seminar report, industrial resources, industrial trend analysis books. We also develop a set of subject categories and use it in the setup of Gerontology
integrated resources website; a subject-based scheme for browsing Gerontology resources.


Releveant Papers

Chang, Shan-Ju L. (2005). Serious Leisure and Information Research. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 3(1/2),15-22.(Journal released in Dec.,2006)
Abstract
The coming of aging societies is a global trend and Taiwan is included as one of the aging societies, according to United Nation's criteria. There are many social, educational, and medical issues ahead and much research is needed to form the proper policies and decision-making.

This article traces the establishment and development of gerontology internationally, especially the responses from the American Library Association in forming the policies to serve the oldr population in recent years in the light of uch social movement. The author concludeds the paper with suggestions of the areas that library professionals need to consider for better services to the seniors in the future.

Keywords: Gerontology, Aging Societies, Libraries, Information Services, Policies