As part of the PERINE project the commonly accepted questionnaire was sent to a wide range of educational researchers throughout the whole country. We decided to collect the names of those persons who are known as researchers in the field of education science, and who have a considerable range of publications showing their research activity. There were 400 names collected, and individual letters sent to all of them explaining the PERINE project and the aims of the survey. We have received 139 questionnaires back, and quite a lot of letters showing interest toward the project. This is about 35%, but the sample still can be considered representative.

51.8% of the respondents are older than 50 years, and 48.5% considers himself as senior researcher. Very few from the young generations sent back the questionnaire (only 15.8% is under 35 years). The male/female ratio is more balanced (54.5%/45.5%). These data show quite well the situation of educational researchers in Hungary, and also gives some hints about their affinity to modern technology and the Internet. Probably those will be the potential users of the database who are interested, and who took part in the survey.

72% of the respondents are working in higher education, 75.5% says that the major part of his/her work is teaching. This way the survey shows also the Internet usage habits of higher education teachers.

Majority of the respondents consider themselves capable or average user of the Internet (77%), but very few are experts (5%). Among the experts only 2 persons are older than 50 years. 23% uses the web on a daily basis, and only 22% are the very rare users. The majority is an occasional user. It means that among this population Internet is not yet an everyday device, but they are getting closer and closer to it. There are not differences between the genders.

75.8% of the researchers are able to find sources for the research with good success on the net. This is also true for other kinds of information resources, which means that they feel themselves successful in information seeking. At the same time they are definitely not successful in finding research partners, publishing or sharing their results with the help of the web. Internet is not yet used for information giving, it is rather used for getting information. Platforms for information exchange should be enforced.

People agree that advanced and simple search facilities make their work more effective, but 61.6% says that there is not too much information on the web. They feel that the web is a useful and effective way for disseminating research. According to 58% it is not difficult to find information on the web, but 78.8% thinks that the variable quality of information is a problem. 97% agree that a good collection of education links would be a help for them.

There is a very strong agreement that better organized information and the availability of the right kind of information are the most important factors contributing to a more fruitful web-usage. Many people voted also for the necessity of an information gateway, and of course for more time. At the same time the respondents feel less important the availability of personal help and training opportunities. They do not like to seek the reasons of the problems in themselves.

30% of the researchers doesn't feel the web has already changed his/her work (more men than women say that). Probably the same people even don't expect any changes from the future. It is interesting, but the majority are still positive toward the new technology, and optimistic regarding the future. They expect to use the net more and more for finding sources, new partners, expertise, and also for publishing. This is definitely a very positive attitude.

For starting information seeking 72.2% of the people uses search engines the most often. Other ways (subject gateways, personal bookmarks, recommendations, e-mail lists etc.) are used much less frequently as starting points.

Among web information sources Hungarian researchers have the following preferences:

on-line journals 82.2%

on-line library catalogues 76.5%

national government web-sites 74.6%

Nat. Ed. Research Institute (NERI) 72 %

on-line newspapers 65.4%

Web sites of professional associations 63.1%

Hungarian Education Index (HED) 48.5%

IRISZ-SULINET (Schoolnet) 46.6%

education portals 35.1%

ERIC 31.9%

EURYDICE 17.9%

EUDISED 11.5%

European Training Village 3.9%

Unfortunately there is a big gap between national and foreign sources. People are still a little bit afraid of foreign sites, and at the same time they are not motivated enough to show their own work to other parts of the world.

These sources (extended with the traditional information sources, like books, library catalogues, archives etc.) show the researchers' strong affinity toward traditional media and old ways of information collecting. It seems to me that we still need time to change this attitude, but if we can provide useful help for our target audience (education researchers), this process can be faster.