Use of E-Resources by the Users of Erode Kongu Arts and Science College (Autonomous)

Abstract

The rapid increase in electronic information resources has changed the academic community and established e-resources as a ubiquitous component of the teaching-learning-research process. This study investigates the use of e-resources by the consumers of Kongu Arts and Science College (Autonomous), Erode, in terms of awareness, usage, purpose, satisfaction levels, and issues encountered. A pretested questionnaire was used to survey 400 respondents, including undergraduate students, postgraduate students, research scholars, and teaching staff. The collected data were analyzed and analyzed using SPSS (Version 25) using descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations, and chi-square tests. The survey recognizes that e-journals (88%) and e-books (85%) contribute the maximum usage, and institutional repositories and open education resources have the minimum usage. The usage patterns are very uneven across different communities of users, and the usage of research scholars and faculty users is more frequent than that of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Academic tasks (72%), research (68%), and preparation for teaching (55%) were the main motivations for using e-resources. The analysis of satisfaction reveals that users are moderately satisfied in general, but with a better score on content relevance and worse on access speed. The highest-ranked barriers were low quality of internet connection (55%), authentication/login issues (40%), and lack of awareness (38%). The study concludes that even though e-resources are extensively used and valued, infrastructure development, awareness creation, and provision of periodic user training programs are essential for meaningful use. This study provides recommendations to library managers and policymakers on how they should enhance digital resource services and promote a research-oriented academic culture.