Use of Online Resources by the post graduate

students of the Department of Social Work,

University of the Punjab, Lahore: a case study
Muahammad Zahid Raza1
Senior Librarian, Department of Social Work,
University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
Shakeel Ahmad Babar2
Senior Librarian, School of Biological Sciences,
University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.

Abstract

In this age of globalization, internet has changed the

scenario of the world and as a result you can access any
information on a single click. In this development, big
databases and online resources have emerged which are
very useful for the researchers to provide their
information needs. The purpose of this study is to
explore the post graduate students perceptions about
online resources. How do they use and manage it? In
depth interviews of total ten post graduate students
were conducted who were doing their M Phil studies in
the Department of Social Work, University of the
Punjab, Lahore.
The present study concluded that post graduate students
perceive that electronic resources are very important
and have crucial and dominant role in their studies.
Online resources are easy to access at their own homes
and it save time of the researchers. Majority of the
students were using search engines as Google, Yahoo,
MSN, Scholar Google etc. and only a few students were
using HEC National Digital Library Resources as
Science Direct, J Store, emerald, Pro Quest HEC etc.
Post graduate students found some problems while
using online resources as lack of better searching
techniques, appearance of irrelevant aids to disturb their
attention, appearance of irrelevant material, no free
access, dis connectivity due to shortfall of electricity
etc. At the end author has recommended that proper
searching techniques should be taught to the post
graduate students and maximum seminars and
workshops should also be organized to aware of the
students about HEC National Digital Library Resources
so that the proper utilization of these prestigious online
resources could be availed.
Keywords- Post graduate students, online resources,
online databases, internet, HEC National Digital
Library Resources.
Introduction

The Internet is an educational tool with numerous

potentials. It may be used to replace the traditional
classroom lectures or supplement traditional
instructional methods. The Internet enables students to
communicate with other students abroad and thus share
each other’s ideas, knowledge, experiences, and
cultures.1 Current generation is net generation and they
are more willing to use electronic resources than
material in hard form. Studies which have been made
about usage of electronic resources shown graduate
students preference about use of electronic resources.2
The access ,downloading and use of electronic material
is more easy as compare to material in hard or printed
2
form . University libraries patterns give preference to
electronic resources, but they also point out problems
regarding their use.3 Gelfand4 Pointed out that students
did not feel comfortable to stare at the monitors and
patiently wait for downloading .While some students
perceive that their concentration divert while they read
an electronic document and meanwhile they may start
messaging their friends, emailing ,play online games
and so on other activities. Griffths and Brophy5 also
pointed out that subject categorization and hierarchal
organization of library electronic resources also created
problem for finding and locating electronic resources.
In spite of these problems and disadvantages
patrons use electronic resources and especially graduate
students use electronic resources while they write their
research thesis.6 Graduate students are “binge ” users of
e- journals and they specially use these resources during
their thesis writing.7 Graduate students use electronic
books within campus more then university staff and
undergraduate students.8According to study conducted
by Sutton and Jacoby9 results showed that graduate
students give preference to access a document online
rather than in printed format. Graduate students give
preference to search documents on internet but they
give more preference to library electronic resources.10
According to Wu and Chen11 libraries are spending
more funds to acquiring electronic resources even their
budgets are shrinking, and it is due to rapid growth of
electronic resources .All above studies show that
graduate students give preference to use electronic

3
resources, so there is need to investigate their
perceptions, use and management of these resources.
Literature review

Information explosion has created a lot of information

and literature on the use of online resources and we will
discuss here the latest and updated literature.
Bashir, Mahmood & Shafique12 explored the
internet use behavior of the students of University of
the Punjab, Lahore through survey. The results of the
study concluded that students use internet for course
and research related activities as well. They use internet
at home and libraries and did not avail any training or
workshops facility regarding internet use. Yahoo for e
mail servicing and Google as search engines were being
used by the students.
Khan, Baber & Zahid13 conducted their study on
Graduate Students’ Perception Use and Management of
Electronic Resources. The study was conducted on 10
graduate students whose interviews were conducted.
Who were doing their PhD studies in different sub
fields of biological sciences in a research school of an
academic university? Graduate students perceive that
electronic resources are very important and have crucial
and dominant role in their studies, even though they
face some difficulties while using these resources. Only
a few students use any bibliographic tool to manage
these resources, but all students understand their
importance and planning to learn these tools in near
future.
4
 Khan, Khan, & Bhatti14 conducted his study to
investigate the attitudes of students at the Islamia
University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan towards learning
through the Internet. A structured questionnaire was
used for data collection. It was found that a majority of
the understudies learnt how to utilize the Internet
without anyone else or with the help of their
companions. The results demonstrated that their
mentality towards the Internet was extremely positive
and they utilized it for the most part for study reason.
They utilized online databases, word references,
reference books and online courses. Google was the
most prominent web index for recovering data on the
Internet. Be that as it may, the utilization of free
database administrations gave by the Higher Education
Commission (HEC) of Pakistan was not tasteful. The
respondents were additionally disappointed with the
Internet administration procurement, moderate velocity
of the Internet association and deficient number of PCs
in PC labs.
Mairaj15 conducted his study on a user-based
evaluation of the use of Pakistani university’s library
websites. A questionnaire [printed and electronic] was
used to collect the data from 17 universities. A
purposive sample of 60 users from each university
based on their academic role difference [faculty,
researchers, graduates and undergraduates] was drawn.
The findings of the study demonstrated that utilization
of college library sites in Pakistan was tasteful.
Supporters who as often as possible utilized the Internet
and library were found as incessant clients of the library
5
sites. College sites were observed to be indispensable
wellsprings of mindfulness about the nearness of the
library sites and PCs physically accessible at the college
libraries were the critical spots to utilize the library
sites. Concerning's scholarly part contrast, workforce
associated with the library sites from offices/resources,
while analysts and understudies liked to utilize them
from college libraries. The library sites were
fundamentally used to discover course-related materials
or hunt in online community inventory (OPAC).
Be that as it may, on the premise of clients' scholastic
part distinction, workforce utilized the library sites to
look in Higher Education Commission (HEC) Digital
Library offering universal insightful writing; specialists
got to them to seek in OPAC, while understudies
favored them to discover course-related materials. The
study suggested making dynamic sites in all college
libraries of Pakistan with helpful substance and best in
class administrations for more extensive use.
Bhatti, and Javed16 revealed the Internet usage,
purposes, difficulties while using internet by the Post
Graduate Students at Nishtar Medical College (NMC),
Multan and also distinguished the use of various
wellbeing related sites and databases to supplement
learning by PGS. This study depends on complete
writing survey and pre-tried poll that was circulated
among 210 PGS. The outcomes demonstrated that
33(18.5%) were female and 145(81.5%) male
altogether 178 respondents. The majority of the
respondents utilized web aside from stand out

6
respondent. Greater part of the respondents dependably
utilize Internet for their training reason equently utilize
it for exploration, for exceptional data, to acquire data
about wellbeing and amusement purposes. Results
demonstrate that PGS were utilizing Pubmed database
at times and MedScape, PakMediNet and EBSCOhost
at times. The study closes for the need of mindfulness,
introduction and trainings to use diverse databases for
looking for insightful data.
Research questions

As this study is focused on the post graduate students’

perception, usage and management of electronic
resources, so following research question are made to
answer about these thing:
1-what do students perceive about importance of online
resource?
2- What type of online resources are students using?
3-Whether the students’ required material available in
electronic format from online resources?
4-Do the students face problems while using the online
resources?
5-How do the students manage the online resources and
retrieved data from them?

7
Research Methodology

Studies on electronic resources used mostly

questionnaire e-survey or log on transaction analysis
but in this study the method used for data collection
was in depth interview .For this purpose (10) M Phil
students were selected and their interview were
conducted. Before conducting interview they were
informed prior and after their consent interviews were
conducted. The selections of these students were made
from a Department of Social Work, University of the
Punjab, Lahore. The website of University of the
Punjab and website of its Main Library has healthy
collection of HEC Digital Library Resources and they
can access these online resources by sitting anywhere
for their research.
Only those students were selected for interview
whom had knowledge about online resources and they
used these resources in their studies. These all students
are doing their research study in different sub fields of
Social Work. The interviews were standardized open
ended because questions wording and sequence were
already made, but participants were open ended in their
answers. The language of interview questions was
English. Total ten students were interviewed, and all the
students answered in Urdu. The interviews which were
conducted in Urdu were translated in English for data
collections.
A pilot study was also conducted before
conducting final interviews to check that whether there
is any ambiguity regarding understanding the interview
8
questions .For this purpose two students were selected,
whom had knowledge about electronic resources and
they used these resources. In final interviews, before
starting the interview the interview questionnaire was
handed over to students so that they could understand
the questions and if they had any confusion ,that could
be sort out .For interview recording mobile phone was
used. These interviews were lasted ten to fifteen
minutes on average.
The interview participants were welcomed
before starting the interview and the purpose of study
was explained before them. These interviews were
conducted in library of the Department from where they
were selected.
Results

Perception about electronic resources

When students were asked about importance of

electronic resources all told that these resources were
very much important for them, because it provide quick
access to information resources. One of the students
told that it pave the way to know more and more
researches available on the same topic on a single click.
One of the students told that it is better option for
female students that they can access material from
online resources by sitting at her own home. One of the
students told that online resources have easy access for
the researchers. One of the students told that through
these resources we can access data cheaply and
efficiently. One of the student told that through these
9
resources we can get solid latest information. One of
the students also told that online resources have
revolutionized the world and have changed it into
globalized world.
“I feel it easy and more comfortable to search
my required material from electronic resources
by siting at my own home and there is no need
to go to the Department to get it”. (one of the
participants, M Phil student).
Usage of electronic resources
When students were asked that what type of online
resources were they using, most of the students replied
that they used google.com, MSN, yahoo,
scholar.google.com etc. Only few students were using
HEC National Digital Library Resources as emerald,
science direct, J Store etc. One of the student were
using was using Scholar Google and Google Advance
to find his required topic and was claiming that he find
about 70% of his required material. One of the student
was describing that she used specific organizational
sites as well to access her required material as data
related to child labor from ILO site. One of the student
was using Google, Yahoo and MSN and was describing
that 60% relevant material was found. When asked
about HEC online resources majority of them were not
aware of it.
When students were asked about location of electronic
resources use. Eight students out of ten told that they
mostly used these resources in their Departmental
10
Library and in Classrooms because there was
availability of Wi-Fi facility and internet speed was
quite good. While two students reported that used these
resources mostly at home and when enquired they told
that they were day scholars. Those students who were
living in university hostel they also told they use and
access these resources in their hostels due to internet
access in hostels.
When students were asked about how to learn to
use electronic resources, six students out of ten told that
they learnt their use gradually with self practice. Two
students reported that they start using computer right
from their schooling .One student told that at masters
level her research supervisor guide and one student out
of ten told that at bachelor level their was information
science as their subject course so they started his
learning from that time.
Availability of required information

About availability of required material in electronic

format, majority of the students reported that most of
the time their required material available up to 70% in
electronic format but some times they did not find their
required material in electronic format due to
subscription problem. One of the student told that
sometimes he did not find his required material in
electronic format due to subscription problem but more
than 70% of his required material available to him in
electronic format. Some students also faced lack of
searching techniques problems to access their relevant
data from the online resources.
11
 “I cannot find all my required material, some
data bases demands subscription charges, so
compromise have to be made according to
situation”. ( one of the participants ,M Phil
student).
Problems faced by the Students

When students were asked about the problems they

faced during use of electronic material they told that
they faced some problems as irrelevant aids appear in
the screen to disturb their attention. One of the student
mentioned that there was no free accessibility to
required material due to unavailability of subscription
and the data base they accessed demanded subscription
charges. Third problem which was reported by students
was that irrelevant material appeared and they had to
search up to 10th page to find his relevant material. One
of the student told that various search methods in
different databases some times confused him. He has
not well aware about the better searching techniques.
Dis connectivity due to shortfall of electricity and slow
speed of internet, so file downloading speed become
very slowly.
“Irrelevant material always disturb him and
sometime he has to go up to 10th page to find his
required material”. (one of the participants, M
Phil student).

12
Management of Electronic Resources.

When students were asked about how they mange their

required electronic resources. All the students told that
they typically download these resources and saved in
folders in their computers, laptops and early they took
their prints. Two of the students told that after
downloading, they e-mailed these resources to their
email addresses or bookmark it. One of the student told
that she also used book marking for these resources.
Majority of the students were using their laptop
to save their data. Eight students out of 10 were using
laptop to save their data and others were using tab,
mobile or email address to save their data.
“I download and save my data in my laptop,
mobile and tab as well”. (one of the participants,
M Phil student).
Conclusions and recommendations of the Study

The present study revealed that post graduate students

perceive that electronic resources are very important
and have crucial and dominant role in their studies.
Online resources are easy to access at their own homes
and it save time of the researchers. Majority of the
students were using Google, Yahoo, MSN and Scholar
Google etc. to find their study related material and only
a few students were using HEC National Digital
Library Resources as Science Direct, J Store, emerald,
Pro Quest HEC etc. The study concluded that post
graduate students found some problems while using

13
online resources as lack of better searching techniques,
appearance of irrelevant aids to disturb their attention,
appearance of irrelevant material, no free access, dis
connectivity due to shortfall of electricity etc. At the
end author has recommended that proper searching
techniques should be taught to the post graduate
students and maximum seminars and workshops
should also be organized to aware of the students about
HEC National Digital Library Resources so that the
proper utilization of online resources could be availed.
This study was limited to just M Phil students further
studies could also be executed on graduate and under
graduate students of the University of the Punjab,
Lahore.

14
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