[Evaluation of the use and effectiveness of university electronic library resources and services in higher education : the case of Qassim University]

Abstract EN

The research problem revolves around the evaluation and effectiveness of university electronic library resources and services in education by faculty members and graduate students.

This research aimed to determine the extent to which graduate students benefit from Qassim University's e-library in both Arabic and English sections and the extent to which faculty members benefit from the e-library in building course content, identifying sources, and developing assignments.

The study used a quantitative data gathering method by collecting data from 86 male and female students at the master's and doctoral levels through the online questionnaire.

The results showed that the extent to which students benefit from the e-library is average.

Faculty members indicated that the e-library helped them to practice their position as supervisors, to provide students with a set of skills, to enrich their courses, to cope with individual differences among students, to add new topics to their courses, and to teach students to exercise critical thinking.

Furthermore, it was found that the correlation between the extent of the benefit and students' gender was not statistically significant.

Additionally, no correlation was found between the degree of utilization of the library in its Arabic and English sections and a student's academic degree.

Regarding the effect of students' majors on the use of the e-library, the statistics revealed no relationship.

Finally, students and faculty members provided several suggestions to increase the effectiveness of the e-library and to develop its services.