Perception and awareness on electronic resources among the faculty members of engineering colleges in tirunelveli district

Abstract

The present study aimed at evaluating the awareness and use of e-resources among the newlinefaculty members of engineering colleges located in Tirunelveli District. The data were newlinecollected in person from 18 engineering colleges personally using a well-structured newlineself-administered questionnaire employing convenience sampling method. Out of 900 newlinequestionnaires distributed, 632 questionnaires were received back and considered for the newlineanalysis. The collected data were fed into MS excel worksheet and analysed with SPSS newlinepackage. The findings of the study revealed that: most of the faculty members were male. newlineMore respondents belonged to 35-45 years of age. Most of them had PG qualification. Half of newlinethe respondents were Assistant Professors. Majority of them were working in Mechanical and newlineCivil departments. The faculty members used e-journals very often; access e-journals in the newlinelibrary and departments. E-books were used often. The e-books were mostly accessed in the newlinedepartment. E-databases were used often and they are accessed mostly in the library. Most of newlinethe respondents use e-theses and dissertations and subject gateways/e-portals rarely. Open newlineeducational resources were used often by most of the respondents. Most of the e-reference newlineresources are used occasionally. They learn to use e-resources with the guidance of their newlinecolleagues, self-learning and trial and error method; prefer to access Internet at Department and newlineresidence ; use internet for data communication and to access general information and newlineteaching materials; prefer Google Chrome; mostly use Google and Yahoo; prefer PDF newlineformat; employ author and title search method; agreed that e-resources had made their newlineresearch performance better and effective; improved their searching skills and made their newlineknowledge sharing process easier and faster. Some felt that e-resources had made them prone newlineto plagiarism and created digital divide. Most of them used e-resources for preparing teaching newlinematerials and seminars and conferences. Easy accessibility, usefulness and accuracy, newlinereliab