Reaching the students with e- resource facilities

Abstract

Attached

The Library, University of Sri Jayewardenepura as a well established academic library caters for undergraduates, postgraduates, academic and non academic staff members of the five faculties of the university. The library spends a large sum of money to purchase books, periodicals and e-databases annually. In 2014 access was given to our users for five major databases through the consortium of University Grants Commission namely Emerald, SAGE Research Methods, Oxford Journals, Taylor and Francis and Wiley online and in addition for the subscribed database JSTOR. The objective of the study was to examine the importance of IL ( Information Literacy) sessions conducted by the library staff to the students with regard to the knowledge imparted on information seeking aspects. With this objective library conducted sessions on e -resources. Though the library conducts such programs for all the categories of patrons only the sessions conducted for undergraduates were selected for the present study. Participants included third year and fourth year undergraduates of Faculties of Management Studies and Commerce, Applied Sciences and Medical Sciences and the total population was 308. Content of the program covers Introduction to the library, Information Resources on different media and types, steps in searching information, searching techniques and formulation of search strategy, Services offered by the library and Library Website. Pre assessment and a post assessment were done using questionnaires in order to evaluate the awareness and use of library resources and to evaluate the session and to get their suggestions and recommendations. According to the pre assessment it was found that 90 % of undergraduates have not visited the library website before the session. 98% of them have not used the electronic databases available. 75% of the participants have stated that they have used only “Google” for searching information for their studies. 9% of the participants have used “Google Scholar”. 5% of them have stated that they are using databases but names were not specified. Others have not indicated anything. 97% of them were not familiar with any type of Advanced searching options such as Boolean, Phrase searching, Wild card characters and Truncations. There is no difference among the 3rd and 4th year undergraduates, or gender wise or faculty or department wise. Almost all have indicated that they use Google search engine to find out required information but not the Google Scholar. According to the post assessment, participants have evaluated the sessions were highly useful and useful. 99% of them felt that it would be much beneficial if they were given this type of sessions in their first or second year of the course of study. All (100%) participants have confirmed that after the session they would be able to retrieve information more efficiently and effectively using advanced search techniques and use scholarly databases for their studies rather than using search engines. Since the results of this study showed that poor awareness about the electronic databases among students, there is a need to emphasize on that fact. One successful way is to collaborate librarians with teaching faculty to reach the students. It can be of a continuum from one –shot programmes to a credit-based module on information literacy.