Greek engineers and libraries in the coming years: a (human) communication model

Abstract

The Future of Libraries in Human Communication. Twentieth Annual IATUL Conference 1999, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece, 17-21 May 1999. (The CD-ROM is available from IATUL [URL:http://www.iatul.org/]. Engineers are a particular category of information users who frequently have different information needs and habits compared to other scientists in the fields of applied sciences. Apart from pure scientific information, engineers are professionals who need technological information, standards, legislation, technical reports, business data, statistics and advertisements. Discusses these differentiations with reference to international bibliography. The contribution of the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE) in developing information services for engineers is presented. TEE is the professional organization of Greek engineers as well as the consultant to the government in technical and related aspects. Its library in Athens was established in 1930 and renamed the Documentation and Information Unit in 1981 to satisfy the information needs of Greek engineers by developing modern services. The scope of this research is to predict the information needs and habits of Greek engineers in the future and to identify the role of a professional organization like TEE to meet these requirements.