USE AND ADEQUACY OF E-RESOURCES BY THE RESEARCH SCHOLARS AND STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KASHMIR IN SCIENCE & SOCIAL SCIENCE FACULTIES: A CASE STUDY

The study was an attempt to determine the use and satisfaction level with respect to the electronic resources provided by the University of Kashmir to its users. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed to collect the primary data from full time Research Scholars (M.Phil/ Ph.D) and post graduate Students of Science and Social science faculties, university of Kashmir. The findings reveal that Lack of awareness regarding different types of e-resources and Lack of library assistance are the major cause behind low usage of e-resources. The result shows that users of science faculty use eresources adeptly than Users of social science faculty. The findings could be helpful to know the different challenges and concerns faced by users while accessing and using eresources. The study also highlights the current scenario of the Science and Social science faculties in University of Kashmir with reference to the awareness and usage of electronic resources.


INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth of information and communication technologies have gave rise to the evolution of several new jargons like paperless society, electronic resources, portal / gateway and global digital library. In the day context , all types of libraries viz: academic, public and special are not only providing printed resources to their library users rather they provide printed, electronic as well as other Internet resources like ebooks and databases for fulfilling the day to day academic and research requirements of the library users. The traditional functions of libraries and librarians have undergone radical changes in the present day context of ICT. Now libraries and information centers have incorporated/ adopted various electronics resources for its collection developments to fulfill the requirements of different category of library users in a better way.
Electronic resources refer to those materials that require computer access, whether through a personal computer, mainframe, or handheld mobile device. Over the past few years, a numbers of techniques and related standards have been developed which allow documents to be created and distributed in electronic form. The library and information centers are increasingly being called upon to provide more relevant, up-todate and timely information to a wide range of users. In order to satisfy Kumbar (2004) libraries require availability and accessibility to a variety of information resources and formats (such as digital full-text, sound, graphics, images, multimedia and hypertext, as https://doi.org/10.36311/1981-1640.2015.v9n1.08.p135 well as print documents). Electronic resources are invaluable research tools which complement print-based resources in any traditional library. Electronic resources provide access to information that might be restricted to the user because of geographical location or finances. Electronic resources proved to be more useful than print resources due to inherent capabilities for manipulation and searching. Users get increased access to databases of online refereed journal to the other resources which provides information that is up to date, international scope and sometimes not available elsewhere. Electronic resources have exploded in popularity and use. In addition (Bajpal et al., 2009)

PROBLEM
In the present milieu, the e-resources are regarded as the back bone of any research institution as they are means to provide easy and simultaneous access to information at any time. The migration of print resources to electronic resources has possibly varied impacts on the users and intuitions that use them. The study was an attempt to measure the usage and dependency of users on e-resources available through the Allama Iqbal library (central Library). The study also finds out the perceived impact of the e-resources on the academic efficiency of users and problems encountered by them while accessing and browsing the e-resources.

OBJECTIVES
The following are the objectives of study: To know the frequency of Visiting Library.

II.
To know the Awareness and use of different types of electronic resources.
III. To find out the Satisfaction level of user with the present collection electronic resources.

IV.
To gauge the use of library website as a gateway to e-resources.

V.
To identify the reasons and importance electronic resources against print resources.

VI.
To uncover the problems faced by users while accessing the electronic resources

SCOPE
The study was limited to the full time Research Scholars (M.Phil /PhD) and Post graduate Students of science and social science faculty, University of Kashmir.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A large number of research studies have been conducted on the use of electronic resources. A survey conducted by Ismail and Zainab (2005) found that students used ebooks mainly for writing assignments/research projects (54.3%), reference (30.9%), leisure reading (6.2%), and browsing (3.7%). Moreover Ozoemelem (2009) Verma et al. (2009) reveal that most of the faculty members have used E-journals, some of them found it excellent and for some of them it is good. For some faculty OPAC is good, very few members say that circulation service is excellent and for some of them it is satisfactory.
Display board service, interlibrary loan, reprographic, reference service and technical enquiry services are not provided or there is lack of awareness. They found that most of the respondents seek assistance of the library staff on regular basis. Assistance by the staff is needed by the faculty member for using online journals, searching books and other library services.
Furthermore Ansari and Zuberi (2010)    determines that faculty members are not generally satisfied with the current level of university subscribed e-resources. They identified limited number of titles, limited access to back issues, difficulty in finding information, inability to access from home, limited access to computers and slow download speed as major constraints.
These constraints do affect e-resources use in the public universities. However, these constraints are mainly related to the poor IT infrastructure and limited access to eresources, which may also lead to other constraints such as an unwillingness to use the resources regularly and consequently low satisfaction with such resources. Again Ahmed (2013) survey shows that the students are not at all satisfied with the current level of university subscribed online resources. The students identified limited access to computers and slow download speed as major problems. These problems do affect electronic resources use by students in these universities. However, the problems are mainly related to poor ICT infrastructure which may also lead to other drawbacks such as unwillingness to use the resources regularly and thus low satisfaction with such resources.
Similarly Gakibayo et al. (2013) found that utilization of e-resources was not only affected by lack of computer skills and information literacy skills but also lack of enough computers and slow internet connectivity. The frequency of use of these resources indicated that a lot need to be done to increase e-resource use. The study performed by Sivathaasan and Velnampy (2013) employs that correlation and regression model to test the operational hypotheses and results revealed that usage of e-resources has a strong positive association with academic performance (r = 0.623, p < 0.01). Multiple regression analysis showed that the usage of e-resources has an impact on academic performance at the rate of 38.8 % (R 2 = 0.388), which is statistically significant at the levels of 0.01 (p < 0.01). In addition to Toteng (2013) study shows that the undergraduate law students did use most of the electronic databases that the library subscribed to. The databases that the students used most were OPAC, Juta Publications and EBSCOHost. Rehman et al. (2014) The study reveals that although respondents have shown their overall satisfaction with the reference collection, staff, facilities and services provided by their libraries but they did not rank highly satisfied to any category of reference service.

METHODOLOGY
In order to achieve the above laid down objectives. The study adopted descriptive The collected data was analyzed and presented in the tabular form.

I. Frequency of visiting Library
The study found that all 100%      (84%), 4 (5.3%), 0(0%) students aware of them. It was concluded from the data that the awareness level of science faculty users are far better than users of social science faculty. The reasons that took behind the unawareness are less exposure to computers and internet. Another reason was the lack of library professionals which will guide them and another important flaw was lack of departmental computer labs almost all departments.

Figures in the Braces denote percentage
While analyzing data, it was found that research scholars and post graduate students of science faculty use e-resources more efficiently and decisively than the Research scholars and students of social science faculty. All research scholars and students of science faculty use e-journal (100%), while in social science faulty it was nearly 50%. Research scholars and students of science faculty use mostly used ejournals(100%), e-mails(100%),e-research reports(100%) followed by e-magazines (88%) e-maps(88%), e-data archives(80%), e-newspaper(72%), While as Research Scholars of Social science use e-mail (88%), e-Newspaper (80%), e-magazines (80%) followed by e-journals(48%).
The students of science faculty use e-journals (100%), e-mail (100%) followed by e-newspaper(92%), e-data archives(80%), e-magazines(80%), e-maps(73.3%), while as students of social science faculty not use much e-resources they mostly use ebooks(78.7%), e-newspaper(66.7%), followed by e-thesis(60%), e-journals(48%). It was ascertained from the study that a very small number of students of both faculties use of e-bibliographies databases. A clear picture is provided by table 3.The results indicate that the users of social sciences are not much use of e-resources. The reason for low of usage e-resources by social science users as compare to users from science faculty may be the lack of awareness to different types of e-resources and computer literacy that become obstacle for the optimum use. The other immense factor was that teachers in social science faculties uses old traditional book, black board and chalk methods in their class rooms and are less inclined to latest sources and technologies of modern information. on the other hand teachers of science faculty uses internet, installing Wi-Fi devices in their respective departments and uses all latest Hi tech gadgets in their labs and also having very well maintained computer labs which was totally lacking in social science departments.

IV. Ease of Access to E-Resources
The finding reveals that Research scholars (72%) and students (73.33%) of science faculty find it easy to retrieve information while in social science faculty the users find it difficult to use e-resources i.e. research scholars(36%) and students(34%).
The reasons are that the social science faculty uses traditional methods of learning and are very rare uses internet or other digital offline resources for retrieving information as science background often exploit internet and new Hi tech gadgets in their labs. A clear picture is depicted by table 4.

V. Use of the Library Web Site as a Gateway to Access Electronic Resource
While investigating the user's approach for searching information on the internet, it was found more that 44% research and 26.66% students of science faculty search their information through library website while the large number of users gained access through other libraries' web sites or other free websites. In social science faculty 60% of research scholars and very little number of students search through library website. The library website is not designated as such to give the users an easy way to navigate and access their required information. The lists of e-resources are not organized in a convent way like subject wise categorization. The users feel tedious job to navigate through library website. A clear vivid picture is offered by table 5.

IX. Reasons for Using E-Resources
The data analysis of the study depicts that the majority of users of science subjects in the opinion that e-resources saves time and proves to be more informative than traditional resources, while the majority of Social science users in the opinion that e-resources are time consuming, difficult to use and expensive. A clear picture is provided by table 9.

Major Findings and Conclusion
The major findings of the study are enumerated as: 3. Majority of users of both faculties make recurrent use of e-journals, e-books, e-maps and emails.
4. Users of Social science faculty find a difficult task to access information from the web.
5. Both the faculties find library website a lackluster in navigating the desired information resource.
6. Both the faculties find a computer training or course an imperative role to play in finding information effectively from the web.