DIGITAL INFORMATION RESOURCE PREFERENCES OF UNDERGRADUATES: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO FACULTIES OF AGRICULTURE, ARTS, ENGINEERING, AND SCIENCE OF UNIVERSITY OF PERADENIYA

Abstract

Any comprehensive research covering the information seeking behaviour of the undergraduates of the University of Peradeniya is not evident. To fill this gap, the researcher carried out a university-wide survey, and used the findings of one aspect for this paper, with special reference to the Faculties of Agriculture (FAG), Arts (FA), Engineering (FE) and Science (FS). The objectives of the paper are 1) to present the trends of the use of Digital Information Resources (DIR) for academic activities by the undergraduates in the four faculties, 2) to analyse the factors affecting their DIR usage pattern, and 3) to make recommendations to improve their use of DIR. Of 415 surveyed, 315 (76%) responded to the questionnaire. Overall findings indicated that, Search Engines (SE) are used by 82%, Wikipedia (W) by 63%, Government Websites (GW) by 27%, and full text databases (dbs) by 19%. However, there are faculty-wise variations. FAG recorded the highest use of DIR (SEs by 96%, W by 73%, GW by 52% and dbs by 18%). FS recorded a similar use of SEs (87%) and W (70%) to that of FAG but the use of GW (11%) and dbs (2%) in the FS is the lowest among all the faculties. FA recorded the highest use of dbs (33%). The most noticeable finding was the low use of databases (despite the availability of JSTOR and CABI in CD/ ROMs), against the comparatively high usage of search engines and Wikipedia, in all faculties studied …