Awareness and usage of subscribed Electronic Resources: a case study of academic staff members, Faculty of Education, University of Colombo

Abstract

Electronic resources have emerged as vital sources for learning, teaching and research activities in the higher education institutes. The University of Colombo subscribes electronic resources for all the faculties annually. Therefore it is essential to analyse the awareness and usage of subscribed electronic resources by the academic community of this university. This study aims to evaluate the awareness, usage, level of satisfaction and the challenges faced by the academic staff members of the Faculty of Education in accessing subscribed electronic resources. The survey design was used to collect the data from all the academic staff members of the Facuity of Education (31) and 24 were returned producing a rate of 79%. The study revealed that most of the academic staff members (66.7%) are aware of "The Journal of Teacher Education". Among the Consortium databases, most of the academic staff members (88.9%) are aware of Emerald database (88.9%) followed by Taylor and Francis (77.8%) and Oxford Journals (55.6%). It is remarkable that all the staff members (100%) are well aware of the JSTOR database. Among the subscribed resources "The Journal of Teacher Education" (83.3%), Emerald database (66.6%) and JSTOR (83.3%) are highly used by those staff members of the Faculty of Education. It was also found that the main purpose of their using subscribed resources was to conduct research (61.1%). 16.7% of them mentioned that they access resources when the need arises for the preparation of teaching and writing articles. Among the staff members, 61.1% of them are satisfied with the subscribed resources. Lack of resources (n=22), lack of training (n=22), lack of searching skills (n = 14) and lack of time (n=l3) were identified as issues in accessing electronic resources. Majority of them (75%) suggested subscribing more journals and databases . Therefore, this study recommends to subscribe more journals and databases, to continue the subscription of JSTOR, to provide frequent training to all the academic staff members and to update the library website frequently. The support of the library staff should be enhanced in different ways to help the academic staff members of the Faculty of Education.