"This study, therefore, is an attempt to provide librarians, business executives and other interested persons with more accurate information than has heretofore been available on the distribution and present status of industrial libraries serving the electronic, engineering and chemical companies in Florida. Libraries operated or maintained by the federal or state government either for military or civilian use were omitted from this survey. The writer has chosen this subject because she expects to serve as a technical librarian in an industrial research laboratory and because she wishes to determine the extent of such library development in her adopted state"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1960." / "Submitted to the Graduate School of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Agnes Gregory, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-52).

This study began with an interest in corporate libraries and a genuine curiosity in the information preferences and resources valued by executive leaders at JET Aircraft Co. Executive information preferences and the downward trend in special libraries initiated the investigation of information seeking among executive leaders and yielded the inquiry: What resources do JET Aircraft Co. executives value when they need information? Employing an ethnographic approach, this study investigated what JET Aircraft Co. executives know about information resources, what they believe about information resources, and how they act when they require information. While JET Aircraft Co. maintained a special corporate library called the Company Research Library (CRL), the purpose of this study was to determine what resources were of value to executives at JET Aircraft Co., understanding that the CRL may or may not be a resource executives’ value. As a byproduct, this study also sought to establish executive information preferences and perceptions of the CRL. Information seeking at the executive level, studied through an ethnographic lens, provided insight into how executives at JET Aircraft Co. work and what they prefer, and it established a baseline for the Company Research Library’s position among the resources valued by executives.