Abstract:
The University libraries have positioned themselves as the main vehicles for the
organization, access, distribution and use of stored knowledge of quality. The role of these
institutions and associated information services is to contribute to the education, leisure and
thus to the socialization process of our society.
The proliferation of Electronic Information Resources (EIRs) has number of significant
impacts on the use of print resources by the users of the libraries. Thus, electronic
environment has created significant role changes for librarians and they become managers
of the EIRs.
This study attempts to investigate the availability, services and extent of usage of EIRs, and
to explore the difficulties prevailing in the libraries regarding the use of available EIRs in the
University of Peradeniya.
The user categories, which were academic staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students
in the University of Peradeniya were selected as the user population for this study.
Professional library staff was included as user category to compare the EIRs usage with
other user categories. The research sample which was selected using the proportionate
stratified random sampling method consisted 25% from the total population from academic
staff, 5% of the undergraduate students, 10% of the postgraduate students and all
professional library staff. Individuals were selected randomly from each stratum.
Questionnaires were used as the main research tool for the survey research and were
interviewed when required.
