The adoption of university library Web site resources: A multigroup analysis

Abstract

University libraries invest a massive amount of resources in digitizing information for the Web, yet there is growing concern that much of this information is being underutilized. The present study uses the technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate university library website resources (ULWR) usage. We categorize users based on academic roles and then analyze them as subgroups in order to observe different adoption patterns across groups. A total of 299 usable responses was collected from four different universities and across three populations: undergraduate, master, and doctoral student/ faculty groups. The findings show that different library users indeed access ULWR for different reasons, resulting in a need for tailored managerial efforts. Overall, the extended TAM explains undergraduate students' usage best; the explanatory power of the model is significantly lower for the doctoral student/faculty group. Some of the findings challenge results reported in TAM research in other fields. The unexpected findings may result from the application of the model to a different context. Detailed theoretical implications and managerial guidance are offered.

The use of public computing facilities by library patrons: demography, motivations, and barriers

“…Previous research has examined the different aspects of internet use by library staff such as the attitudes of public library staff to the use of internet (Spacey, Goulding, & Murray, 2004), the impact of the internet on adoption of website resources (Kim, 2010), and the market for internet and library services (D'Elia, Jorgensen, Woelfel, & Rodger, 2002).…”

“…Although subjective norms were often found to be weak predictors of behavior in traditional attitude studies (Conner & Armitage, 1998), library internet access may be an exception. In a study that examined the use of university library web-resources, subjective norms were found to be one of the most important factors that predicted the use of the resources (Kim, 2010).…”

Factors Affecting University Library Website Design

“…Following this line of reasoning, dominant research has reported that users are most likely to use university library website resources (ULWR) when they can help with user tasks. 2 Although we know now that the utilitarian perspective should be applied to web design, not clear is the extent to which web designers consider users' needs and, likewise, the extent to which users consider ULWR to be successful in terms of meeting their needs. Also not clear are what factors other than user needs influence university library website design.…”

Librarians' and Information Professionals' Perspectives Towards Discovery Tools — An Exploratory Study

“…Through the years, TAM was examined by researchers in various areas. Examples are: perceived system performance (Sun, 2012), perceived user resources (Mathieson, Peacock, & Chin, 2001), prior experiences with similar technologies (Agarwal & Prasad, 1999), age and education (Agarwal & Prasad, 1999), e-learning (Aharony & Bar-Ilan, 2014;Calisir, Altin Gumussoy, Bayraktaroglu, & Karaali, 2014), personal innovativeness (Aharony, 2013), tourism (Pantano & Corvello, 2014), libraries (Aharony, 2013;Booker, Detlor, & Serenko, 2012;Jeong, 2011;Kim, 2010), and e-commerce (Gefen & Straub, 2000;Liébana-Cabanillas, Sánchez-Fernández, & Muñoz-Leiva, 2014). The present study explores the TAM in a new context: discovery tools in the library and information science arena.…”

“…option. These features can be perceived as the usefulness factor in the TAM and can then be associated with Kim (2010) who suggested that users will use university library website resources if they find them useful. In addition, they can be linked to Denton and Coysh (2011), suggesting that users particularly liked the facets of discovery tools.…”