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Report: e-Library Usage among UBD Undergraduate Students

Summary

This report aims to find out the extent of the e-Library usage among UBD undergraduate

students, to define the factors that affect its usage and determine the students’ experiences of

the e-library. Questionnaires were designed and distributed to elicit relevant information such

as the student’s age, gender, ease of access to an internet connection and level of usage of the

e-library. It was found that e-library services and facilities being offered by the university is

being utilised only by half of the undergraduate students of UBD. The usage of the e-library

is influenced by factors such as the students’ competence in the use of the technology, its

perceived usefulness and motivation by lecturers. The e-library has proven to be beneficial to

its users.

1. Introduction

With the rapid advances in information and communication technologies, computer-based

activities have been prevalent in almost every institution. Many higher-learning institutions,

including the University of Brunei Darussalam, have adopted ‘e-library’ as a way to

encourage students to be receptive to the new technologies. UBD’s online public access

catalogue, dubbed as the VISION, provides users access to over 2000,000 bibliographic

records through a single connect point whereby information and applications are shared

(Kefli, 2008). Despite huge amounts of dollars spent to accommodate this, it had been

claimed that students have made very limited academic use of the technological application.

However, this claim is not based on any real investigation. This report aims to find out the

Madison Sheena Nazareno Vejerano (08B1904)

Report on e-Library Usage Among UBD Undergraduate Students
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
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extent of the e-Library usage among UBD undergraduate students and define the factors that

affect its usage. The report also aims to determine the student’s experience of the e-library.

Information for this report was primarily obtained from questionnaires, using the technique of

convenience sampling as described by Creswell (2003).

2. Findings and Discussions

2.1 Forty responses from the questionnaires given out were used: twenty-two responses

(55%) being from males and eighteen (45%) responses being from females. The respondents’

overall mean age was 22 + 3.2 years old. 94% of the respondents have easy access to an

internet connection, either at home, in a public location, or both.

2.2 The study showed that 98% of the respondents were aware of the e-library services being

offered by the university. A reason to suggest this is that the university have long introduced

the VISION online public access catalogue to UBD freshmen during orientations.

Introductory courses about the e-Library had also been provided by the university.

2.3 The results of the questionnaires revealed that 53% of the respondents were active users

of the VISION while the remaining 47% do not utilise the various resources and facilities that

the e-library has to provide. These non-active users of the VISION solely relied on search

engines, like Yahoo Inc. and Google, and other material resources when doing researches and

course assignments. On the non-use of the e-library, the predominant reasons were that the

non-active users felt that other resources are just as useful, if not more, than the e-library.

Another reason was that they did not feel competent in using the service because it is

complicated, and lastly, the non-active users thought that loading the e-library page and

browsing through the VISION took a relatively larger amount of time. This suggests that the

Madison Sheena Nazareno Vejerano (08B1904)

Report on e-Library Usage Among UBD Undergraduate Students
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
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student’s perception of the usefulness of the e-library affects whether or not they are active

users of the VISION. Usage of the vision may be influenced by the perceived ease of using

the technology, too.

2.4 It was also known that only 55% of the respondents attended the introductory course and

had a hands-on experience on the VISION. The statistics suggest that many of the

undergraduate students remain uninformed of the e-library’s full potential. This is why

almost half (45%) of the respondents said they had very little knowledge about using the e-

library wisely for their educational needs.

2.5 Only 54% of the respondents were mindful of the large sum of money the university

spends for the e-library. On contrary, the remaining percentage of respondents thought the e-

library was a fairly inexpensive technology. This provides a base as to why the students could

not really appreciate the use of the VISION online public access catalogue.

2.6 Responses about the frequency of e-library usage by the respondents were also obtained.

Among the active users of the e-library, 25% use the VISION more than once a day. 70% use

the VISION about twice a week and only 5% use the VISION less than once a month.

2.7 It was observed that course motivation have an influence in the frequency of e-library

usage. 87% of the respondents who use the e-library either ‘more than once a day’ or ‘about

twice a week’ were students who were required by their course lecturers to obtain pieces of

information from the VISION.

2.8 89% of the respondents who use the VISION to supplement their academic needs felt that

using the e-library have greatly assisted them in obtaining better information for their

researches and course assignments easily.

Madison Sheena Nazareno Vejerano (08B1904)

Report on e-Library Usage Among UBD Undergraduate Students
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
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3. Conclusion

In the light of the findings and its interpretation, the following conclusions were made:

3.1 The e-library services and facilities being offered by the university is being utilised only

by half of the undergraduate students of UBD. The level of use of the technological

application has not yet reached a desirable level.

3.2 The extent to which the e-library is used by the UBD undergraduate students are clearly

affected by factors such as the students’ competence in the use of the technology, its

perceived usefulness, motivation by lecturers and the students’ ease of access to an internet

connection.

3.3 In principle, the UBD students’ awareness of the university’s e-library is very

pronounced.

3.4 Despite this, a fairly high percentage of the students do not seem to accept the utilisation

of the new technology and are unfamiliar to the intelligent use of the e-library.

3.5 The lack of real and detailed information about the e-library and its use did not encourage

all students to embrace the concept of using e-library.

3.6 However, e-library has provided easy and useful access to a wide range of information.

Positive feedback of students who were active users of the e-library prove the e-library to be

beneficial for them.

Madison Sheena Nazareno Vejerano (08B1904)

Report on e-Library Usage Among UBD Undergraduate Students
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
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4. Recommendations

4.1 This report suggests that University Brunei Darussalam make the e-library introductory

course compulsory for new intakes, therefore providing each student a clearer and more

detailed view about e-library.

4.2 Specific information and updates about the e-library should be provided to effectively

highlight the technology’s usefulness

4.3 Feedback from students must be taken into consideration to continuously improve the e-

library services and facilities.

4.4 Course lecturers should be encouraged to ask students to extract more information from

the e-library for future assignments and presentations.

4.5 Further investigation must be conducted, using a larger number of participants for the

study.

5. References

5.1 Durrance, J. C., & Fisher, K. E. (2005). How Libraries and Librarians Help. Chicago: ALA.

5.2 Ramayah,T & Aafaqi, B (2004), Role of self-efficacy in e-library usage, Malaysia Journal of

Library & Information Science, Vol.9, no.1, July 2004: 39-57

5.3 Kefli,M. (2008), UBD portal, ETC, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

5.4 ‘e-library’. Retrieved 24th March 2009 from http://www.elibrary.bigchalk.com/usage/297fhg92

Madison Sheena Nazareno Vejerano (08B1904)

Report on e-Library Usage Among UBD Undergraduate Students
Universiti Brunei Darussalam