A Study of E-Resource Use Patterns Among Scientists of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research Institutes in Telangana

Abstract

Electronic resources are critical for contemporary agricultural research; however, users' behavior towards access, platform satisfaction, and competence issues has not been adequately measured. The current study is an attempt to measure the adoption, awareness level, usage behavior, and satisfaction with respect to electronic resources, particularly Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA), among scientists from ICAR institutes located in the Telangana region. The research employs a quantitative survey research design, and empirical data have been collected from 221 Ph.D.-educated researchers (N=221, 91.7% response rate) using a structured questionnaire and analyzed via descriptive and inferential statistics (X² testing). The results show that electronic journals (85.1%) and online databases (81.9%) are the main formats used because of easy digital storage (93.7%) and 24/7 availability (83.3%). However, the CeRA gained 100% of users, and the level of satisfaction was high (55.6%), but according to the results of the Chi-Square test, there is a relationship between being an academic and the preference for retrieval channels (X² =9.842, df=2,р=0.007). For example, young scientists use popular search engines (65.6%) rather than OPAC systems (0.9%). Information overload (71.9%) and lack of searching skills (41.6%) were considered operational barriers; thus, 76.5% asked for training. It can be concluded that although e-resources are extremely important, the way to use them strategically is to change the approach from managing repositories to capacity building of users through interactive workshops (70.6%) and UI/UX interface enhancements.