Search results

This paper aims to share some experiences and practical activities related to the use and management of usage data in the Digital Resource Acquisition Alliance of Chinese Academic Libraries (DRAA) as a reference for library consortia engaged in providing usage statistics services of e-resources to member libraries.

A literature review and online survey are used to analyze the research and practice of e-resources usage statistics conducted internationally. The case of DRAA is introduced to present how DRAA develops usage statistics services and promotes the implementation of the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) to deliver usage statistics to member libraries. Future developments and enhancements are also described.

The main actions taken by DRAA to develop usage statistics services are as follows: development of the DRAA Usage Statistics Portal to provide a single point of access to usage statistics from participating publishers on behalf of member libraries; development of a SUSHI client, taking the lead in promoting SUSHI implementation to automatically obtain usage statistics in Chinese academic libraries; establishment of a working group on usage statistics and the China Academic Library and Information System/DRAA Standards and Recommended Practices Research Task Group to form a long-term mechanism for monitoring and gathering usage statistics; and strengthening of the understanding and application of standards and best practices for libraries and vendors in China. Scheduled enhancements in the future include a deep analysis and utilization of usage statistics, the promotion of Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources and SUSHI to Chinese academic resource publishers and raising awareness about normalizing usage statistics.

This paper has pertinence and wider implications for library consortia engaged in providing e-resources usage statistics services to member libraries.

E‐resource usage statistics contain a wealth of information, but mining that information from the massive amounts of data can be time consuming, expensive, and dangerous. Focuses on the practical aspects of getting some use out of usage statistics. Recent national studies in the USA and efforts to standardize the gathering and interpretation of e‐resource usage statistics show promise for accelerating the adoption and diffusion of reliable, meaningful usage information. The article concludes with some speculation about the overall value and long‐term potential for e‐resource usage statistics.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether quality antecedents and individual characteristics can influence faculty members’ continued usage intention of electronic resources (e-resources) in selected public universities in Tanzania.

A total of 204 faculty members participated in the study from three public universities in Tanzania. The study used structural equation modelling, ANOVA and t-tests to perform analyses.

Better educated and middle-aged faculty members with a wide experience of using e-resources are more likely to continue using e-resources. Information quality had positive relationship with continued usage intention of e-resources while service quality had indirect impact to continued usage intention through information quality and system quality.

Based on the DeLone and McLean information systems success model, this study integrates quality factors (information, service and system quality) and individual characteristics as antecedents to the continued usage intention of e-resources. The study comprehensively documents empirical findings on impacts of quality factors and individual characteristics on e-resources in a developing country. The study reveals results that are useful for enhancing usage of e-resources by faculty in other institutions with similar conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale involving the factors affecting usage of e-resources.

The present study identifies five factors affecting the usage of e-resources: training modes, awareness, influencers, utilitarian benefits, and experiential and hedonic benefits. To generate measurement items, two focus group discussions were carried out which resulted in 20 items. To empirically ensure reliability and validity of scale, data were collected from 347 postgraduate students actively using e-resources. To test reliability of scale, internal consistency reliability and construct reliability were examined. The construct validity of scale (which includes convergent validity and discriminant validity) was verified through confirmatory factor analysis using structure equation modeling.

Findings of the study present a statistically reliable and valid scale consisting of five factors and 18 items.

The present study is one of the distinctive studies on introducing a scale employing factors affecting usage of e-resources.

This paper aims to investigate the usage of electronic resources within the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH) in order to support subscription and budget decisions. This has become necessary because of the difficulty faced by institutions in paying subscription fee as a result of the continuous increase in subscription fee, financial constraints and high exchange rates.

The study is a quantitative research of electronic resource use covering six years. Full-text download statistics of ten most used electronic resources accessed by an average of 33 institutions were sampled from 27 databases and analysed to investigate level of usage. Six out of the ten electronic resources were analysed to evaluate cost per use over four years. Sampling was purposive. Data analysis and presentation were conducted using a descriptive method of analysis of simple frequency count, mean and percentages, while Microsoft Excel was used to organise data into tables and graphs.

Findings revealed an improved usage of CARLIGH-facilitated electronic resources. However, the rate of improvement declined by the year. Also, October and November recorded high usage, while January and May-August recorded low patronage. Finally, using a mean as a benchmark, it was ascertained that costs per use/article was less than $0.98.

Because of limited data evaluated, the research results may lack generalisation; hence, there is a need for further research.

This study will be useful in supporting librarians’ decisions on continuous subscription, budget justification and promotion.

Present research analyzes and evaluates the impact of e-resources usage factors (training modes, awareness, influencers, utilitarian benefits and ease of use) towards satisfaction and intention to use these e-resources.

The data for present study were collected from postgraduate students of Delhi (India) and 248 valid responses were received through the survey. After reliability and validity tests, structural relationships between variables were studied.

The present study revealed that all five factors significantly affected satisfaction and intention to use e-resources. However, influencers were found to have the highest impact on satisfaction and intention to use e-resources.

The present study is a maiden attempt to explore the impact of e-resources usage factors on satisfaction and intention to use by postgraduate students at management schools in Delhi, India.

This paper aims to investigate the usage pattern of electronic resources (e-resources) among management graduates. The respondents were asked about the types of e-resources they used, who their influencers were, their preferred place for surfing, the frequency of use, purpose for which they used e-resources, its benefits and the problems they faced while using e-resources. The findings of the study will help in enhancing the usage of e-resources among students who opt for management courses.

This descriptive research was conducted in Nagpur, Maharashtra (India). Data collected from 150 management students through purposive sampling were analyzed through descriptive statistics, and the responses were presented in tabular form.

The investigation reveals that students are well aware of e-resources and consider them to be very useful for their academic performance. Interestingly, students are found to be using non-paid resources more than paid ones because of a lack of search skills. Discipline-wise investigation reveals that students from the disciplines of information technology, economics and finance use e-resources more frequently than those studying subjects like marketing, operations and human resource management. Faculty and training have emerged as strong influencers that have persuaded students to use e-resources.

The present study is limited to students studying management courses in Nagpur, Maharashtra (India).

This research will help institutions, librarians and publishers in gaining insight on the utilization patterns of e-resources. The uniqueness of this study lies in the fact that it has analyzed and presented the responses of management students belonging to different disciplines in management studies such as, marketing, finance, human resource management operations, economics and information technology regarding their usage patterns of e-resources.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how libraries in Malawi are accessing e‐resources.

The paper adopted a case study approach. Quantitative data were collected and analysed. Data was collected through MALICO and INASP documentary. Usage statistics provided by counter compliant publishers and collated by INASP from 2008 to 2012 was the other source of information. Annual member contributions and e‐resource subscription sheets from MALICO were used for data collection. Qualitative data have been presented and analysed in the form of tables and graphs.

Libraries in Malawi have access to peer reviewed and impact factored journals courtesy of EIFL, INASP, HINARI, OARE, AGORA and other international organisations. Libraries in Malawi contribute towards the e‐resources to the consortia, MALICO, at heavily discounted rates done through negotiations by eIFL and INASP with the publishers. Currently, the libraries are failing to contribute their portion towards e‐resources due to inadequate budgets. Libraries in Malawi have resorted to digitising local content and establishing locally available institutional repositories.

Libraries in Malawi are making enormous strides in building digital libraries and institutional repositories based on local content.

There is little researched information on the funding levels and use of e‐resources in libraries in Malawi. This paper seeks to bridge the gap by providing some information on the state of e‐resources for libraries in Malawi.

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the use of e-resources at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), those are being offered through the University Grant Commission – Information and Library Network (UGC-INFONET) consortium. Statistical techniques are applied on usage reports generated by e-resources vendors/publishers to understand trend and seasonality in usages of e-resources in academic libraries. The researchers evaluated gain in popularity of e-resources and drew a comparison in use of various databases of e-resources in terms of volume of downloads over a period of three years. The study would help in designing an instrument to evaluate utilization of e-resources. The cross comparison of databases helps in identifying e-resources, which have been optimally used.

The present study used quantitative approach to express utilization of e-resources in terms of number of downloads of full text research papers from Project Muse, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer Links, Taylor and Francis and JSTOR databases, accessible through the UGC-INFONET consortium. The investigation is based on secondary data of usage statistics made available by the UGC-INFONET consortium. The descriptive statistics techniques have been used in the initial phase of the investigation to understand trend in utilization of e-resources and examine robustness of various statistical tests to identify most appropriate tests for the latter phase of the investigation. The robustness analysis has been recommended for graphical and non-parametric tests for advanced investigation, in the latter phase of the study. The with-in cohort analysis techniques investigates numbers of monthly downloads from each database for a period of three years, i.e. 2008-2010 to explain seasonality in volume of downloads of e-resources.

e-Resources have been gaining popularity gradually in academic libraries; this trend is in tune with gaining of popularity of web-based intellectual resources in other sectors. The study established need of library consortium for sharing resources and subscription fee. The investigation proves significant association between numbers of downloads of e-resources from different databases in the same period; thus gain in popularity of one database encourages readers to explore other databases. The study indicates seasonality effect in the usages of e-resources in academic libraries. This seasonality effect is contemporary to the academic calendar. There are large numbers of downloads just before the examinations, which are held twice in a year and negligible number of downloads during and around long summer study breaks. Thus, the bandwidth rendered to the university is not consistently used during the academic session. The coverage of databases in terms of disciplines and numbers of journals varies to great extent. There is overlapping in the coverage of databases. The strength of students and their demands for scholarly works also vary across disciplines, thus cross comparison of numbers of downloads from databases has little meaning until impact of these three parameters are not controlled in the investigation of utilization of e-resources.

The literature shows that no study has been carried out for the use of e-resources by researchers of JNU.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse and evaluate the use of e‐resources by the engineering academics of Rajasthan state. It aims to consider the various factors of e‐resources usage such as purposes, impact, importance, problems, acceptance, and satisfaction with e‐resources.

A survey method of research was applied to ascertain the present status of use of e‐resources. The survey was conducted with the help of a structured questionnaire followed by interview as and where it was felt necessary. Two formats of questionnaire were prepared; first, a printed format and second, an electronic format using Google Docs spreadsheet. The data so collected were analysed and interpreted with the help of MS Excel.

The study finds many aspects of e‐resources use among engineering academics of Rajasthan. It reveals that academic staff were using many types of e‐resources. They were also using the latest sources of information like e‐groups, virtual conferences. Using the e‐resources, their academic/professional competency also improved. The teaching methodology also involved the e‐resources uses and the students' ability was also affected in a positive manner by this methodology. Some problems were also explored in using e‐resources. The majority of users were quite satisfied with using e‐resources.

The study was an attempt to evaluate the use of e‐resources by academic staff of engineering colleges of Rajasthan. Results from the study are encouraging and it is hoped that the findings will provide meaning and a useful platform for further research as well as usability among engineering academics will also be improved.