Abstract:
The libraries in Sri Lanka, like in most developing countries suffer from inadequate
funding and/ or stringent budget cuts. This has affected the level of services offered to
both in terms of quality of collection and the degree of staff support provided. In such
a situation only a few libraries can afford to have a wide range of information
resources within their budget. To minimize such situations they formulated the
Library Consortia, with the aim of sharing available resources with other member
libraries. This study is an attempt to investigate how far the consortia can provide
access to e-journals to satisfy needs of academics in Sri Lankan universities. This
study was focused only on Science and Engineering faculties. It was revealed that
75% of the university librarians have accepted e-journal consortia, as a useful effort
for the information needs of their universities and 31.3% of them have affirmed that
this great effort of e-journal consortia is an essential to overcome the budgetary
problems of the universities regarding journal acquisition. The special feature of the
study revealed were all most all the (97.63%) university academics were interested in
more specific as well as subject related information through the consortia as online
databases in the future than present. Therefore the recommendations should be
directed to the academic's requirements in e-journal acquisition.
