The use of electronic resources by postgraduate students of the University of Cape Coast

Abstract

Developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have radically taken over every sphere of activity in university libraries. Academic libraries owe it a key duty to keep pace with technological advancement in order to cope with users’ continual sophisticated information requirements. The main purpose of this study was to examine the use of electronic resources by postgraduate students of the University of Cape Coast, and with a view of giving recommendations based on findings. The major objectives of the study are: (1) To determine postgraduate students’ awareness of electronic resources in the library. (2) To find out the frequency of usage of e-resources by students. (3) To determine the computer literacy level of postgraduate students. And (4) To identify the likely problems in the utilization of electronic resources by postgraduate students. The findings revealed that most of the postgraduate students were aware of the e-resources in the library. The findings of this study also revealed that most postgraduate students rather preferred to access information from Google scholar, and other web based databases more frequently than the databases in the library. The respondents identified poor internet connection as the most significant constrained for ineffective access e-resources.