Use patterns of e-journals among the science community: a transaction log analysis

Student usage of open educational resources and social media at a Sri Lanka Medical School

BACKGROUND

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Social Media (SM) for academic information seeking is common among undergraduates nowadays. There is limited data on OER and SM use for education in Sri Lanka. This study was aimed at evaluating the OER and SM use for education among the medical students at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya. Stratified random sampling was used to select students from the first year to the final year. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect data.

RESULTS

The study included 257 responses (response rate: 89.5%), of which 185 (72.0%) were females. The OER and SM use for educational purposes at least once a month among students was 96.1% (95%CI: 93.7-98.5%) and 88.3% (95%CI: 84.4-92.3%) respectively. There was no gender difference in OER and SM use. The main reasons for accessing OER were the availability of information at any time (36.1%) and ease of information access (31.5%). Wiki sites (84.4%) and Facebook (79.8%) were the highest accessed OER and SM platforms. The majority of students were in view that the information on wiki sites (51.4%) and results of general non-specific web searches (56.0%) were reliable. Only 33.9% of students searched information from educational and government-related sources and 18.7% had accessed e-journals. Through SM, 79.0% joined educational groups and 77.0% followed the medical-related sites, pages and people. More than one-third of students (35.8%) could not find academic information from SM due to the information overload and 31.1% mentioned that SM distracted their education.

CONCLUSION

The majority of the students used OER and SM for education; however, only a minority accessed reliable information. Students accepted information available in wiki sites and general non-specific web searchers without considering the credibility of sources. The majority of the students did not refer to e-journals. Distractions to academic work and the difficulty to access accurate information were major concerns of using SM. This study highlights the importance of improving information literacy among medical students.

E-book data mining: real information behavior of university academic community

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the evidence-based use patterns of Higher Education Commission (HEC) subscribed e-books databases by the academic community at institutions of higher education in Pakistan. The study also investigates the differences in usage based on points of access, scholarly disciplines and gender of users.

Design/methodology/approach

A transaction log analysis (TLA) method was used to explore the use patterns of HEC e-books databases at the University of the Punjab, utilizing the SAWMILL analytical software and MS Excel.

Findings

The results of the study showed that the use of e-books was at a growing stage at the university. Male boarding students of the university were more active users of e-books as compared to their female counterparts. The Central Library of the University of the Punjab, the Department of Zoology and the Institute of Communication Studies were the most frequently used access points for the e-book users, and the Faculties of Sciences, Life Sciences, Economics and Management Sciences had the most active e-book readers. Furthermore, it was found that the HEC e-books databases were only being used during the four months of summer vacations at the university.

Research limitations/implications

The study provides only descriptive use frequencies rather than a deep log analysis of e-books usage.

Practical implications

This research provides important practical implications for examining the evidence-based use patterns of e-books databases' users at the higher educational level. The research suggests that HEC should maintain subscriptions of the most required e-books databases and that the information professionals should conduct orientations and information literacy programs to enhance the utilization of these subscribed databases among female boarder students and those faculties where they were being used less frequently.

Originality/value

The study is the second part of the first phase of a Ph.D. project. This is the first large scale study conducted in a developing country which reports the close to actual, approximate use patterns of e-books based on raw transaction logs of local cache servers at the higher academic level.

Use analysis of the digital library of PhD dissertations defended at the University of Novi Sad

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine the digital library usage patterns as a means of improving the system, as well as the user experience, to give appropriate recognition to the most popular dissertations’ authors and to measure the interest of non-academic users for dissertations defended at the University of Novi Sad (UNS).

Design/methodology/approach

A logging module of the digital library of theses and dissertations of University of Novi Sad (PHD UNS) application has been implemented. The module recorded the messages relating to the search queries and downloads over a three-year period from 2017–2019. These logs are analysed using the Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana (ELK) technology stack and the results are shown using graphs and tables.

Findings

The analysis determined the perfect time for weekly maintenance of the system, defined a recommendation for improving the system and revealed the most popular dissertations. A significant number of downloads and queries originated from citizens, i.e. users outside the academic community.

Practical implications

The conducted analysis defined recommendations for the system improvement which can be used by PHD UNS research and development (R&D) team and revealed the most popular dissertations which are used for the promotion of its authors through faculties’ websites.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of ELK based log analysis of a Serbian language documents’ repository. Besides, the value of results for the PHD UNS R&D team and UNS rector team, the study proves that PhD digital library presents an important Open Science communication channel for presenting scientific results to the citizens.

Analysing reader behaviours in self-service library stations using a bibliomining approach

Purpose

The present study aims, by adopting bibliomining, to analyse the borrowing and collection records in self-service libraries at mass rapid transit stations in northern Taiwan to discover reader borrowing preferences and patterns.

Design/methodology/approach

The current study used data mining to analyse two years of book-borrowing information from self-service library stations; it made use of an association rule mining model and the bibliomining process to identify readers’ preferred books and to explore reader borrowing behaviours. In addition, the librarians’ perceptions of the proposed approach were also investigated.

Findings

The findings indicated that readers often borrowed books in the bibliographical classifications of Home economics; Medical sciences; Psychology; Commerce: administration and management; and Education in the self-service library stations. Based on the bibliomining results, 23 reader borrowing patterns as well as potential books favoured by readers were uncovered. In addition, the challenges of bibliomining and data mining applied to library operations are reported.

Originality/value

Among the studies on the application of self-service technologies in libraries, most examined the integration of the self-service system and investigated users’ opinions. The present study used borrowing records and collection records in self-service library stations to conduct bibliomining and to explore reader borrowing preferences and behaviours as references for collection development and book recommendation services.