Use of electronic resources in business school libraries of an Indian state

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to look at the prolific growth of electronic resources during the last decade. The standards and strategies are sought to access and organize the abundance of e-resources and to ensure free flow of information to the user's community. This survey attempts to measure the quantum of e-resources accessed in the academic ambience of Business School libraries in Orissa (India). Moreover, the study attempts to examine to what extent Electronic Information Services (EIS) are offered to users of Business School libraries in the State with an opinion pool of the librarians of the respective Business Schools. Furthermore, the study aims to highlight problems and constraints faced by the information professionals in accessing e-resources and delivering electronic information services with some constructive suggestions and remedial measures for the ensuing bottle-neck. Design/methodology/approach -The paper highlights the availability of e-resources and critically examines the quantum of their use in Business School libraries of Orissa and the crucial role played by the information professionals in providing electronic information services to users through the findings based on responses from structured questionnaires. The SPSS package is used for analysis of data. Findings -The paper arrives at the conclusion that the internet-based e-resources are being well used compared with CD-ROM databases. Premier web search options like Google and Yahoo! are the most frequently used search engines, while the other searching options are less used. Availability of some key online databases are exclusively confined to only a selected few B-School libraries of the State. Practical implications -The paper restricts the study exclusively to e-resources as the type of material and the librarians of 25 major Business School libraries of Orissa (India) as the respondents in its scope of discussion. Originality/value -The paper sheds some light on the use of e-resources in Business School libraries of Orissa (India) with some constructive suggestions for the development of the platform of electronic resources and services.

An investigation on e-resource utilisation among university students in a developing country: A case of Great Zimbabwe University

“…Adams and Bonk (1995), Scan (2010), Moyo (2004), Liu (2006) and Nicholas et al (2009) defined electronic resources as databases, books, journals, newspapers, magazines, archives, theses, conference papers, examination papers, government papers, research reports, scripts and monographs in an electronic format. Swain and Panda (2009a) regarded e-resources as reservoirs of information that may be milked through various electronic devices such as computers, smart phones, tablets, etc. 'They are fine grained and restructured and often stored within the cyberspace in a compact form'.…”

Use of E-resources by Users of Dr. Y.S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry

“…While attempting to estimate the actual priority among different e-resources through a single choice question Santhi 6 , et al, found that the majority of respondents prefer to use e-journals (20.4 %), followed by e-mail (17.6 %), www (14.8 %), e-theses (14.4 %) and e-newspapers (14 %). E-books (10 %) and e-magazines (8.8 %) The library patrons are keenly interested in using online mode of e-resources than that of offline and as such the former registers more usage than the later mode 11 . Raza 12 , et al, observed that 68.8 % of the respondents prefer to use journals through online mode.…”

Usage of e-journals in French business schools

“…His objective was to optimize the usage of electronic resources. Swain & Panda (2009b) conducted a survey with librarians to raise awareness, create tools and make available more e-resources. This need for collaboration between library and academic areas, i.e.…”