Authors

• Finnish National Electronic Library (FinELib)

Keywords

educational libraries, electronic resources, higher education institutions, information retrieval, information/library resources, library services, online services, research

Abstract

The survey studied user views on the electronic resources provided by Finnish university of applied sciences libraries. Electronic resources were taken to include, for instance, electronic publications, e-books, online dictionaries and reference databases.

The respondents were first asked about the amount and frequency of use, types of e-resources used, perceived availability of e-resources in own field of study or research, what type of e-resources the respondents hoped the university of applied sciences would provide, and whether they would be willing to give up printed materials (books, journals, dictionaries) if the electronic versions were provided by the library. Satisfaction with the e-resources available, what kind of impact their use had had on the respondent's studies or work and main problems with using e-resources were also charted.

Other topics included user support and advice, information channels on e-resources, the most recent use of a scientific article, and the use of the Nelli information retrieval portal. The respondents who carried out research were asked about their scientific discipline, doctoral thesis, number of years of teaching, whether they did research alone or in a group, and to what extent different publication formats (e.g. scholarly monographs, peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, handbooks) were valued in their field. The extent of using interdisciplinary publications and publications from own discipline was explored. Some questions covered the researchers' own publications.

Background variables included the respondent's university of applied sciences, gender, age, student or staff group, and field of study or research.