A Study on Attitudes of University Lectures and Students about the Use of Digital Libraries for Searching Academic Information.

Abstract

Modern world is highly information dependent and the teaching faculty and undergraduates use digital libraries and institutional repositories in their teaching and learning process in order to obtain the information they needed. The main purpose of this research is to figureoutthe situations and the attitudes that university lecturers and undergraduates feel when gathering information by using digital libraries. This research based on the survey method and for the survey all the lecturers and undergraduates of university of Kelaniya has been considered as the research population and a sample was selected among lecturers of Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanity and the undergraduates of the bachelor of (BA) special degree programs of the same faculty. Primary data were collected through distributing questionnaire to the lecturers, using random sampling method. Secondary data were collected through the printed sources which was considered relevant to the research. In the study of academic information, it was revealed that the most of the lecturers and undergraduates of the two faculty were not using digital libraries, Lack of understanding about this concept of the main reason for this situation. Responses indicate more priority to searching academic information in using digital libraries. It was also revealed that they use those information for their research activities. Also Digital libraryusers were happy in that as it contains qualitative information sources and neutral attitude to the quantity of subject. Related information sources. Language barrier faced by the Undergraduate and Lack of facilities, were some of the problem identified. Some of the solutions proposed based on findings are conducting awareness seminars and workshops to share knowledge about digital libraries and its contents, workshops to publicize it by the professional staff in the library field to solve many of the problems successfully which were identified through the study.