CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Introduction
This chapter presents a review of literature related to the area of study. The review of related literature is carried out under the following sub-headings: Concept of E-databases in university library, the awareness of E-databases in university library, uses of electronic database by lecturers in university library, benefit of the usage of E-databases by lecturers in a university library, promotional strategies adopted for E-databases utilization in the university libraries, challenges to the utilization of electronic information resources by library users and the summary of the review.
2.2 The Concept of E- Databases in University Liberaries
Electronic-Databases (e-databases) have become an established component of many academic libraries collections. These databases often contain journal articles, or references to such articles, e-books, reference sources, conference papers and reports among others. There are various types of these databases such as bibliographic, full-text, directory, numeric and multimedia.
E-databases are widely available and can be accessed from anywhere and by many users at the same time. It is therefore convenient to use. University libraries, therefore, spend large amounts of money on these resources to satisfy the teaching, learning and research needs of its faculty and students. As universities spend substantial amount of money on subscription of these databases, it is only appropriate and economical that these databases are optimally utilized to contribute to the academic achievement of lecturers and students and also to get value for money.
According to Gray (1976a), database is an organized collection of information or data usually in computer readable form. Generally they are made available for use by on-line or off-line search services. These search services have computers and software that facilitate retrospective search of one or more databases in order to locate information or references in answer to a specific query.
Databases are mostly characterized by the kind of data they contain that is word, numbers or by their subject matter. Word-oriented databases contain word or text as the principal data, whereas numbers-oriented databases often referred to as databanks – contain numbers, symbols, series, graphs and tables.
According to Shuling (2007), electronic information has gradually become a major resource in university libraries. The emergence of electronic information resources, simply referred to as electronic resources, has tremendously transformed information handling and management in academic environments and in libraries in particular. Ellis and Oldman (2005) note that through the use of electronic resources, researchers and student now have access to global information resources, particularly the Internet for their scholarly intercourse.
The dearth of current and up-to-date information for research in university libraries is attributed to poor levels of developing electronic information resource, (Afolabi, 2007; Faborode, 2007; Bozimo, 2007). Libraries need to be vanguards for technology transfer from the developed world to the developing economies of Africa. To meet these expectations African university libraries must provide a link between local researchers, scholars and their counterparts in other parts of the world. Utilization of online information resources is the way of achieving this objective. According to Tsakonas&Papatheodorou. (2006) electronic databases are information resources provided in electronic form, and these include resources available on the Internet such as e-books e-journals, online database, CD-ROM databases and other computer –based electronic networks, among others.
The Internet
According to Jensen’s Report (2007), 54 countries in Africa had Internet connectivity. By the year 2009 however, Internet penetration as a percentage of the total population of Africa was still 1.4% compared to the world average penetration of 12.7% (Internet Worldstats.com2009). Gakibayo (2001) carried out a study on Internet usage by students and staff at Mbarara University of Science and Technology and the results of the study indicated low usage.
