Students' keenness on use of e‐resources

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to focus on the keenness of students of business schools of Orissa (India) on the use of electronic resources and attempts to evaluate the level of electronic information services offered by the primary information reserves of the respective business schools with an opinion pool of sample respondents. Moreover, it intends to elicit the barriers in use of e‐information with recommendations for the improvement of services and usage of e‐resources.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the use of electronic resources by students of business schools of Orissa (India) through structured questionnaires. SPSS is used for data analysis.FindingsThe study finds that students express keen interest in the use of e‐journals, followed by e‐books, e‐newspapers, e‐reports, and e‐articles. Least interest is shown towards the use of electronic theses and dissertations. The study reveals that the majority of students are aware of EBSCO, and Emerald Management Xtra. However, the awareness of all other databases is not quite so encouraging. Further, it is revealed that the use of printed materials is slightly more compared to that of e‐resources. Use of Web OPAC is also less than expected.Practical implicationsThe paper highlights the practicality of the use of electronic resources, compared to print, among the students of business schools of Orissa (India).Originality/valueThe paper reveals the degree of use of electronic resources by business students and makes some useful deductions for its subsequent generalization.

Croatian university students' use and perception of electronic resources

“…More intensive use of e-journals by female students was also discovered by Swain (2010), while Malliari et al (2011) did not find a significant correlation between gender and information-seeking behavior. The study obtained by Nicholas et al (2008) showed that male students used e-books significantly more than female students, which is not consistent with the present results.…”

“…However, the such statements should be made carefully because it is not possible to give an unambiguous answer to the question of whether students prefer printed or electronic sources. There are still many students who prefer printed sources (Boumarafi, 2010;De Oliveira, 2012;Hamade & Al-Yousef, 2010;Hussain & Abalkhail, 2013;Rockinson-Szapkiw, Courduff, Carter, & Bennett, 2013;Shepperd, Grace, & Koch, 2008;Shuling, 2007;Swain, 2010;Woody, Daniel, & Baker, 2010). One of the reasons why students report that printed sources, such as books, have a better reputation and contain more basic and well established facts is that the Internet holds a great deal of irrelevant and inaccurate information that makes the search difficult (Griffiths & Brophy, 2005;Nkomo, Ocholla, & Jacobs, 2011;Ozoemelem, 2009;Sujatha & Mudhol, 2008;Wu & Chen, 2012;Yu-Mei & Artero, 2005).…”

Knowledge and Use of Electronic Information Resources by Medical Students at Al-Jouf University in Saudi Arabia

“…Similarly, while 60.8% were aware of HINARI, only 38.8% used it. Swain (2010) highlighted that awareness could be influenced by the interest and exposure that a user has in the database. In his study of students' keenness on the use of e-resources in the business schools of Orissa (India), he found that over 62.5% and 52.6% users were aware of EBSCO and Emerald respectively while below the 40 % reported to be aware of other databases.…”

Effect of Accessibility and Utilization of Electronic Information Resources on Productivity of Academic Staff in Selected Nigerian Universities

“…Electronic resources are now used to supplement printed information sources in the university libraries. Different types of electronic resources that are used in this study are: e-journals, e-books, online databases, electronic conference proceedings and CD-ROM databases (Appleton, 2006;Costa & Meadows, 2000;Dadzie, 2005;Lee, 2002;Parameshwar & Patil, 2009;Swain, 2010). Online databases that are commonly used by academic staff in Nigerian universities for their research are EBSCO HOST, AGORA, HINARI, MEDLINE, JSTOR and OARE.…”