Investigating Awareness and usage of Electronic Resources by the Library Users of Selected Colleges of Solapur University

TL;DR

This study surveyed library users in selected colleges of Solapur University to assess their awareness, usage patterns, and reliance on electronic resources, revealing gaps in awareness and technology use.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on electronic resource awareness and usage among college students, highlighting the need for improved training and outreach.

Findings

Most users visit libraries once in three days.

Mobile phones are the second most used device for accessing e-resources.

Awareness of library services via websites is low, especially in self-finance colleges.

Abstract

The study investigated the use of electronic resources/information by library users in selected colleges of Solapur University. Specifically, to investigate the awareness and level of use of electronic resources; perceived reliance, benefits and impact of use of electronic resources on the research activities. The research design for the study was a survey. Questionnaire schedule was used to collect data from 1022 library users from selected colleges of Solapur University. The result revealed that preponderance of users from aided 33.51% Self financing 26.10% and Education colleges 43.24 % preferred to visit the Library once in three days. While analyzing the entire college libraries regarding the frequency of visit, users gave first preference to once in three days i.e. 27.2%. College wise analysis reveals that mainstream of users from Aided Colleges 38%, Self financing Colleges 28.3%, Engineering Colleges 43%, Education colleges 53.2% and Pharmacy Colleges 23.4% are spending their time 1-2 hrs in libraries and 40.8%visit college libraries to issue and return books and in the device usage (33.9%) of users ranked mobile phone as the second device for accessing the e-resources. It is noticeable that 24.7% of users acknowledge from Aided Colleges know about the services of the Library from website but in Self Finance Colleges 8.5% and Pharmacy College 56.4% users aware about the services from the friends it is observed that most of the web technologies are not used by the mainstream of the users due to lack of awareness, training etc.