Evaluation of use of e-resources by academic staff of Navrongo Campus of University for Development Studies through workplace information literacy programmes.

Abstract

The study was carried out to determine how beneficial the Information Literacy Workshops have been to the staff of University for Development Studies (UDS). The study was conducted at the Navrongo Campus of UDS which houses two faculties: Applied and Mathematical Sciences. The study used the survey research method and a purposive sampling procedure to sample the lecturers for a period of two weeks in May 2014. The main instrument for data collection was a questionnaire. The study found out that generally there is a high level of ICT skills among the lecturers in computer usage. The study further established that for the past decade, lecturers have been using e-resources but less frequently. The study also revealed that majority 88.9% of lecturers make significant use of the databases especially Science Direct mostly for educational /teaching purposes while 73.3% of them do so by accessing and using full text journal articles. It also came out clearly that lecturers found the e-resources training very beneficial with a majority 75.6% asking for more training two or three times in a year. It then identified challenges lectures face in using e-resources include: download delays, failure to find the information, frequent power outages and inadequate search skills