Study title

The survey studied user views on the electronic resources provided by Finnish university libraries. Electronic resources were taken to include, for instance, electronic publications, e-books, online dictionaries and reference databases. The respondents who carried out research were first asked about their scientific discipline, whether their field of study was a new one, the extent to which there existed a consensus in the discipline regarding important research topics and theory, whether the respondents did research alone or in a group, and to what extent different publication formats (e.g. scholarly monographs, peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, handbooks) were valued in their field. The extent of using interdisciplinary publications and publications from own discipline was explored. Next, the respondents were asked about the extent of using e-resources and printed material in general, importance of various FinELib databases and resources, familiarity with and frequency and purpose of using the FinELib resources. Relating to user experience, questions charted the ease of finding material through the FinELib e-resources, opinions on the kind of material that should be included in the resources, problems encountered when using them, training needs, the strengths and weaknesses of FinELib, and general satisfaction with the resources. Relating to the use of the Nelli information retrieval portal, the respondents were asked the frequency and ease of use, which services in the portal they used the most, usefulness of the portal, and importance of guidance received from library staff in using the portal. Background variables included the respondent's gender, age, university, student or staff group, field of study or research and whether the respondent had completed a Doctoral thesis.