Use and Awareness of Open Access E-Resources Among Academicians in Kerala: An Overview

Nowadays libraries of academic institutions have been providing electronic resources to users including open access e-resources. Academic professionals use electronic resources for various purposes. The aim of this study is to find out the use and awareness of open access e-resources by academicians in Kerala state.Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the sample and telephone conversations, e-mail discussions and personal interviews with the lectures were made to verify data from the sample. The total population for the study was 300 lecturers from various universities of Kerala state. Out of the total of 300 questionnaires distributed 287 respondents returned filled in questionnaire. The response rate therefore accounts for 95.67%. Frequency counts and simple percentages were used in analyzing the data. Study found that 19.16 % respondents use different open access e-resources when necessary, 21.96 % occasionally and rest of them (58.88%) very often. Academic professionals purposes of using the openly accessible e-resources are for writing scholarly articles (50.17%) followed by work shops and seminar preparation (27.53%) and for research (16.73%).Only 3.48 percentage respondents are used openly available e-resources for teaching. The extent of awareness of open access e-resources in various disciplines revealed that greater usage of open access e-resources was reported by social science stream 189 (65.85%) followed Science streams 98(34.15%)