The Role of Digital Libraries in Egyptian Higher Education.

Exploring the students' information, communication technology (ICT) profile and how it may affect their attitudes towards the Egyptian university digital library (EUDL) and the role of the digital library in the educational and research activities in faculties of nursing and education in Egypt is th...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:DOMES: Digest of Middle East Studies Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 40 - 57
Autores principales: Taie, Eman Salman, Mohamed, Khaled A.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Fall 2009
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Exploring the students' information, communication technology (ICT) profile and how it may affect their attitudes towards the Egyptian university digital library (EUDL) and the role of the digital library in the educational and research activities in faculties of nursing and education in Egypt is the main concern of this study. A questionnaire was distributed to students in the faculties of Nursing and Education at five Egyptian universities. A total of 4008 responses have been received and analyzed. The results showed that nursing students are more active in implementing ICT and they have positive attitudes towards the digital library. The results also revealed that the digital library played a more positive role in the Nursing faculties than faculties of Education. The study also revealed five barriers for not using the digital library by the students: the restriction of accessing EDUL as a source of information for research and education, insufficient Internet access, lack of search skills, insufficient computer labs and the cost of using the available labs. The direct implementation of this study could be in the administration level of the quality assurance programs in the studied faculties. The results of the study could also be generalized to other similar programs in the Egyptian universities. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]