Usage Of E-Journals Among Undergraduates at Unisel Library, Bestari Jaya Campus / Nur Adna Roduan

This report is a result of a study carried out at UNISEL Library, Bestari Jaya Campus on the usages of e-journals by the undergraduate students. This report aims to investigate the purpose of using e-journal resources, to identify barriers in using e-journals services and to identify e-journals impact on completing their assignments and tasks. Qualitative method were used to collect relevant data from the students by conducting semi-structure interview. The interview questions were designed to gather information about the awareness of e-journals, ways the students identify the sources they use, influences of usage, the factors encouraging their use, and the major barriers in term of using them effectively. In addition, the researcher also sought information on the impact of incorporating e-journals in their assignments, research and tasks and their experiences in using e-journals. In this study, data were coded thematically to analyse and interpret the data collected during the interview sessions. Twenty undergraduate students from four faculties in UNISEL Bestari Jaya Campus constituted the respondents of the study. The findings showed that all respondents are aware of the availability of e-journals resources in the library and largely use them for reference purposes in their research and assignments. Accessibilities of e-journals were widely mentioned as the main advantage of ejournals. Even though, they faced barriers while accessing to e-journals, most of the respondents agreed that with the usage of e-journals the quality of their work improves with enrichment of contents and materials leading to high quality of research and assignments. It is however found that lack of awareness is obstacle in utilisation of e-journals. Respondents also identified the need for training in using e-joumals and retrieving information from them time to time. Based on the results some suggestions have been made to the library to effective use of e-journals.