The perception and satisfaction with use of electronic resources by postgraduate students studying humanities :evidence from a Malaysian university

Abstract

In addition to the traditional print resources, libraries of today offer online databases which contain electronic resources (ERs) such as electronic journals or electronic books for better and easy access, regardless of time and distance. The uses of these ERs are growing very fast and are becoming very popular in all kinds of libraries especially academic libraries. Prior studies reported that ERs have changed scholars’ information behaviour. Among these scholars are postgraduate students who depend heavily on library collections and specifically prefer to access materials online. Prior studies also found that humanity departments are still comfortable with printed information resources even though they recommended independent study for every institution. The objective of this study was thus to assess the recent perception and satisfaction with use of ERs by the IIUM graduate students from all departments of faculty of human sciences. The study aims to know whether graduate students from human sciences use and are satisfied with ERs offered and facilitated by the IIUM library. The study employed empirical survey to collect data from postgraduate students in faculty of human sciences. As a result, the study found that the PG students from this faculty perceive ERs well. It was also found that PG students from this faculty of human sciences use ERs and are satisfied with them. Based on the prior findings, this means that the long held perception that faculty of humanities were known to be sticking to print resources is now seemed to be moving to the other side of the subject. However, the respondents also expressed some problems in the access of the ERs which IIUM library staff should tackle for better use.