Purpose
This study investigates the acceptance and importance of digital library among female students of International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan. The study also highlights the problems that are confronted by the female students in completing their research work after limited access to digital library in the female campus of the University.
Design methodology
Survey was administered personally to collect data from 315 female students of eight faculties of the female campus of the university. The convenient sampling technique was used to collect data from the subjects of the study.
Findings
The access to digital library is indispensable to the students to complete their research work. With limited access to the digital library the students were unable to meet their information needs from the Internet and the libraries of other universities. The quantity as well as quality of their research work were affected due the restriction of digital resources. Also the limited access affected adversely to improve insight of the respondents regarding technological developments in their respective area of research. The lack of informational literacy program, IT training workshops, IT literate staff and the electricity failure were the main hindrance to access digital library as well as Internet.
Research limitation
This study was limited only to female students of the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) shape every aspect of life including the educational sector of the country. ICT has come into practice within a very short time and has become one of the basic building blocks of modern society.
Libraries are central organs in a university and play significant roles in achieving the due objectives of higher education (Haider, 2004). The digital library can be explained as a collection of resources in digital form, where users access resources by electronic means and information is delivered to users electronically. The computer technology has become part and parcel in every operation of a library. Technological developments made it possible for librarians to convert print material into digital format which can be accessed through WWW (Kranich, 1999). However, digital libraries are not created overnight. Various stages are involved to develop a digital library; listing in electronic format, developing an electronic catalogue of all library materials, networking and providing web access to this catalogue.
Digital library has a short novel history. By the end of 1980s, digital libraries were hardly a part of landscape of librarianship, information science, or computer science (Saracevic, 2000). According to Borgman (1999), “the highest priority of a library, digital or otherwise, is to serve the research needs of its constituents. Digital libraries are electronic collections that are much richer in content and more capable in functionality than databases or information retrieval systems”. Now articles of various disciplines are available on the homepages of authors or institutions, at journal web sites.
The significant benefits of digital libraries are storing resources in digital format which allow easy access to the online users at multiple sites around the globe at any time. In addition, digital libraries provide various search techniques to access the digitized resources (Wiederhold, 1995).
The explosion of information in digitized format and enormous government funding initiatives enforce the professionals to research the real outcome of digital library.
The traditional focus of digital library research has been on the technological development, there is now a call for user-focused research. Although millions of dollars have been spent on building “usable” systems, research on digital libraries has shown that potential users may not use the systems in spite of their availability. There is a need for research to identify the factors that determine users' adoption of digital libraries (Hong, Thong, Wong, & Tam, 2001).
Understanding the acceptance or rejection of new ICTs has been one of the most challenging issues in the study of new technology adoption. According to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are believed to be essential in shaping the acceptance and use of various Information Technology (Davis, Bagozzi, Richard, Warshaw, & Paul, 1989). “TAM explains that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use determine an individual's intention to use a system” (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003).
The LIS professionals lack in ICT skills in Pakistan. Many LIS professionals the country emphasized the need to improve ICT skills among library professionals (Ameen, 2006, Mahmood, 1998 and Rehman, 1992). Most of the library leaders lack the ability to be innovative, creative, imaginative and visionary, in additional to lacking ICT and communication skills (Haider, 2004).
Access to a digital library is indispensable to the students to complete their research work. Due to limited access to the digital library, they are unable to meet information needs from the Internet and the libraries of other universities. The quantity as well as quality of their research work are affected due the restriction of digital resources. Also the limited access affects adversely improved insight of the respondents regarding technological developments in their respective area of research. They suggested that informational literacy programs and IT training workshops should be initiated for the students. In addition, they suggested that IT literate staff should be appointed in the library, along with full text access to the articles in the databases which were already available as abstracts only in the digital resources subscribed by HEC Pakistan. Last but not least, the respondents emphasized that electricity failure is the main hindrance to access to the digital library and to the Internet.
