Awareness and Utilization of Electronic Information Resources Among Final Year Students of Clifford University, Abia State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the awareness and utilization of electronic information resources among final year students of Clifford University.  Electronic information resources help students acquire information and enhance their learning and research capabilities. The need to  explore online libraries and electronic databases for qualitative data and research output; the high financial involvement per database  subscription and their actual utilization before expiration to justify the investment was the motivation for this study. Observations  revealed that most students depended on Google uncoordinated download rather than utilize library databases. The survey design was  used to carry out this research. This study consisted of 287 final year students in Clifford University and census method was used select  all. Of the 287 copies of questionnaire distributed, 280 were retrieved and analysed using descriptive statistics guided by research  questions. The findings confirmed that the electronic information resources that are highly available for the final year students were  electronic mail (44.3%), internet search engine (38.9%), and internet (37.1%). For the level of awareness of electronic information  resources, internet search engine, electronic mail, e-books, CD-ROM, electronic journals, and scholarly databases ranked high with 52.5%,  JSTOR, Research4life,HINARI, EBSCO host, Science direct, OARE, MIT Open courseware (37.9%) was moderately aware. The degree of utilization of electronic information resources, electronic journals was highly utilized (57.9%) and internet search engines and e-book (36.8%). For the challenges faced while using electronic resources poor network and limited access to computer systems and other handheld devices had 63.9% and 63.2% respectively. The study concluded that most of the final year students were not aware of certain  types of electronic information resources in the library and some don't know how to effectively manipulate the electronic resources. Poor  electric power supply, inadequate ICT skills, limited access to computer systems and other handheld devices posed as challenges. It  was recommended that Stable power supply, effective network services, more computers and other handheld devices such as tabs  should be provided by the university administration to boost the number already in use at the e-library.