An Assessment of Electronic Information Resources Usage and Management A Case study at University of Peradeniya

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.