INCLINATION TOWARDS ELECTRONIC RESOURCES BY ACADEMIC COMMUNITY IN HISTORY: A STUDY

Abstract

This paper highlights the usage pattern of e-resources among faculty members, research scholars and postgraduate students only. The geographical area of the present study was restricted to the discipline of history with faculty members, research scholars and postgraduate students of Kurukshetra University and Maharshi Dayanand University only. The study has been conducted at the Kurukshetra University and Maharshi Dayanand University with the help of structured questionnaires offline and online. The results of this study show that subscribed e-resources are sufficiently used by the top three categories of users but a significant difference was found in the usage pattern of e-resources among the status of the academic community. The usage rate of e-resources for faculty members was higher in comparison to research scholars. This study is unique in that very few studies have been conducted in the discipline of history regarding the usage pattern of different categories of e-resources by the academic community. This study deals as a separate and important unit to find out the different dimensions of the usage pattern and ranking of e-resources among the academic community in the field of history.

Keywords - e-books, e-journals, Electronic resources, History, online databases