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This study aims to examine the types of documents that humanities scholars use in their publications, how humanities scholars use electronic resources during their research, and their opinions are regarding their library’s acquisition policy for electronic and printed resources.

A total of 13 university faculty members from the fields of Chinese literature, history and philosophy participated in this study. The documents cited in their publications were analyzed and in-depth interviews were conducted.

The results showed that books were the dominant document type cited by the participants. They frequently used electronic resources during the stages of idea generation; document search and collection; and interpretation and writing. If they used an ancient book in an electronic format, they cross-checked it with its printed version to verify the accuracy of the text. Although the participants anticipated that the university library would favour e-journals instead of printed journals, they expected the university library to continue purchasing printed books.

Many university libraries encounter difficulties in choosing between materials in electronic and printed formats, particularly in the humanities field. The study findings provide a clear understanding of how humanities scholars use electronic resources in the digital age.

This paper delineates the appraising and comparing the circumstances that may influence the choices and preferences of the undergraduates of National Institutes of Technology (NITs) of the north-western region of India for using library’s print versus electronic resources. The author investigated the circumstances in knowing whether different situations impact their choice for using print or electronic resources concerning their demographical characteristics for their academic learning.

The study used a survey of undergraduates at six NITs in the north-western region of India. The responses were analysed using Chi-Square, Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis statistical analysis tests, via SPSS software.

The study revealed that respondents preferred a mix of both forms of sources for their academic studies under different circumstances. The results reveal that the institution of respondents affected the choice of print resources over e-resources and vice versa in many different circumstances. Respondents’ year of study affected the choice of using print over e-resources and vice versa in certain situations. The residential backdrop affects the choice of using e-resources over print in some situations. Gender of respondents affects the choice of using e-resources over print under some situations.

The study will further aid librarians at six NITs in the north-western region of India to know whether print resources still have the same importance among library users or their preference switched towards using electronic resources.

This study offers new perspectives on the use of print verses electronic resources among the undergraduates at six NITs in the north-western region of India so that the libraries can procure desired resources rather than moving with the market trends.

Presents a report from the conference Preserving America’s Printed Resources: The Roles of Repositories, Depositories, and Collections of Record, organized by the Center for Research Libraries. This was a two‐part event held in Chicago, 21‐22 July 2003, and this report summarizes the second part, which was an extended discussion on the theme of repositories and collections of record, asking “How can libraries work together to optimize management of the nation’s knowledge resources in printed form?” The intended outcome of the discussion was to be an agenda consisting of realistic near‐ and long‐term national‐level actions, and identifying the appropriate participants in those activities and the roles those participants might play.

The authors wanted to provide an enriched understanding of how lawyers keep up-to-date with legal developments. Maintaining awareness of developments in an area (known as “monitoring”) is an important aspect of professional’s information work. This is particularly true for lawyers, who are expected to keep up-to-date with legal developments on an ongoing basis.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with a group of lawyers who authored and published current awareness content for LexisNexis – a large publishing organisation. The interviews focused on identifying the types of electronic, printed and people-based current awareness resources the lawyers used to keep up-to-date with legal developments and the reasons for their choices.

The lawyers mostly used electronic resources (particularly e-mail alerts and an electronic tool that alerted them to changes in website content), alongside interpersonal sources, such as colleagues, customers and professional contacts. Printed media, such as journals and newspapers, were used more rarely and usually to complement electronic and person-based resources. A number of factors were found to influence choice. These included situational relevance, presentation, utility and trustworthiness, the speed of content acquisition and interpretation facilitated by the resource.

The authors' findings enrich their understanding of lawyers’ monitoring behaviour, which has so far received little direct research attention. Their design suggestions have the potential to feed into the design of new and improvement of existing digital current awareness resources. Their findings have the potential to act as “success criteria” by which these resources can be evaluated from a user-centred perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to study reading behavior in the digital environment based on demographic factors including faculty, degree and gender among higher education students of Isfahan University.

This study was survey descriptive using a researcher‐made questionnaire and data collection was accomplished using stratified random sampling method. The population of the study was the postgraduate students from seven faculties of Isfahan University. Different aspects of reading behavior were studied including the amount of reading of electronic resources, the style of reading electronic resources, the amount of annotating the electronic and print resources, the amount of printing out electronic documents for reading, and preference of reading medium.

The study showed that the amount of reading of electronic resources is highest in the students of technical and engineering subjects, while the amount of printing out of electronic documents is highest in the faculty of sciences. PhD students usually make use of scanning for reading electronic resources, whereas postgraduate students generally print out more electronic documents.

The findings of this study will help university authorities and digital libraries managers to provide better services to users and students.

With the advent of internet and computers, reading is not the same as in the past. Reading in the digital age has changed and this paper tries to give some insight about the reading behavior of students and their preferences and the differences based on faculty, degree and gender.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of information resources in the research papers of the graduate students in Library and Information Science (LIS) at Kuwait University.

The methodology chosen for this paper is the bibliometric method by way of citation count of the references found in the literature review papers of LIS graduate students at Kuwait University by identifying the preferred form of publications, retrieval method, time span, subject distribution, and the most cited journals.

It is shown that the majority of students used journal articles, web pages, and books as the most preferred form of resources. Their preferred method of retrieval was the printed format. Time span of the most used citations is from three to ten years. They mostly used traditional library journals such as Bulletin of MLA, Library Review, The Electronic Library, Library Management, and College and Research Libraries.

The quantity and quality of citations were reviewed and approved by the student advisor, and the sample was drawn from a population of 74 papers based on the availability of original papers.

The findings in this paper provide important insights for the academic library administration to take appropriate measures to achieve a higher level of awareness and skill by the users.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges and examine the impact of the transition from print to electronic resources at a medium‐sized academic library at a multi‐campus Caribbean university, The University of the West Indies (UWI), with particular reference to the St Augustine campus.

Through a review of the literature on the shift from print to electronic resources, the paper uses the experiences of The UWI St Augustine to provide a model that can be used by other libraries.

Libraries have successfully built a “hybrid” collection of print and electronic resources despite challenges with information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, balancing costs, licencing model and strategies for selection, acquisition and management of electronic resources. There are some key steps which libraries can follow when transitioning from print to electronic resources.

The paper focuses on the experiences and lessons learnt in moving a collection from print to a hybrid of print and electronic resources. However, this by no means encapsulates all the issues associated with any such undertaking.

The paper provides some key steps that a library can take in transitioning its collection from print to a print‐electronic hybrid.

Although the literature speaks to different aspects of implementing electronic resources, this paper provides a roadmap for similar libraries with the lessons learnt and simple steps that a library should take when considering to move its collection from print to some level of electronic resources.

The development of digital technology and digital resources have influenced one’s reading habits. This paper aimed to study undergraduate students' reading in digital sphere at universities in Vietnam.

A focus group study with 31 undergraduate students of six groups at six public universities was conducted to get their perspectives on reading preference, strategies, effectiveness and psychological factors influencing reading ability.

The results confirmed that bachelor students' reading preference for document formats depended on their reading purposes. They used different reading strategies for digital and traditional reading, for instance, keyword searching, taking note, skimming, scanning, need-based reading, selective reading, comparison, evaluation and criticism. Students had faster reading speed for digital texts; however, they had better concentration and memorization in printed documents. When students have motivation, good attitudes and emotion, they could be motivated to read more.

These findings were useful in enhancing the understanding of digital reading competence and help stakeholders find out solutions to improve reading capacity of Vietnamese students in digital space.

Unlimited access to the Internet and the widespread availability of both full‐text electronic resources and printed materials in many academic libraries offer almost unrestricted access to users for their research and curriculum needs. Yet the overwhelming availability and supply of information forces users to sort and filter through the wealth of information and sometimes make educated guesses regarding their validity and reliability. In order to determine user priorities and preferences for information resources and their selection criteria, questionnaires were distributed to faculty, graduate, and selected upper‐level undergraduate students of the Departments of Economics, Political Science, and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. The survey results show that for scholarly research or serious curriculum needs the use of printed materials is still popular among faculty and graduate students, while undergraduates primarily prefer to use Internet services.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the use of electronic information resources and facilities by humanities scholars at the University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.

A questionnaire survey of faculty from arts and humanities departments at the University of the Punjab was conducted. In total, 62 faculty and research staff participated.

The results correspond with previous studies conducted in other countries. The humanists still stick to the printed information sources but they pay good attention to electronic resources. Most of them have access to computer and internet at office and home. They are regular users of a variety of electronic technologies. Although faced with many problems, the humanists perceive that modern technology made their work easier.

The study is based only on the humanities faculty in a large university of Pakistan. The survey should be replicated on a larger sample for generalization.

Keeping in view the positive trend of humanists towards modern technology, universities and libraries should give more funding to provide electronic resources and facilities in the arts and humanities discipline. Special training programmes for humanists should be organized.

This is the first study on this topic in Pakistan. The results can be useful to design services and facilities in humanities libraries and information centres in Pakistan and other developing countries.