WILL THE INTERNET REPLACE LIBRARIES? – AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON UNIVERSITY BUSINESS STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS IN THE ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

Traditionally, academic libraries have been viewed central to information seeking and acquisition of knowledge in learning. However, the Internet has become an alternative tool for university students in information seeking and access due to its convenience and ease of use. Some literature indicates that the popularity of using the Internet by students in learning is challenging the existence of physical libraries. The purpose of this study is to investigate undergraduate business students’ perceptions of internet and library in academic information seeking. A total of 334 respondents from a private university participated in this research. The participants consist of Year 1 to Year 3 business students. Chi-square test was conducted to determine the relationships of demographic characteristics on two aspects: (1) how reliable the materials found at the internet compared to materials of the academic library; (2) the belief the internet will eventually replace libraries. The study examines the associations between the independent variables of gender, levels of study and years of computer technology experiences with dependent variables of nonparametric data. The results provide exploratory understanding of business students’ perceptions of an information centre compared to an information portal in the electronic environment. On the issue of reliability of materials obtain on the Internet compared to academic library, majority (65%) of the respondents, regardless of their gender, year of study and year of computer technology experiences generally agreed that both sources are equally reliable. As for the students’ belief of Internet will eventually replace libraries, significant relationship was found on the levels of study, but not on gender and years of computer technology experiences. Implications for the need of paradigm shift in academic librarians to reposition the role and services of academic library to one of its major target customers – students in users’ training activities on the use of electronic resources; and the importance of inculcating information literacy in the digital environment are discussed