Accessibility and use of Tanzania local journals by Graduate students and academic staff at the University of Dar es Salaam.
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Date
2011
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Publisher
University of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
Journals in academic institutions play a vital role in storage and dissemination of scholarly information. Accessibility to local journals provides researchers with information that is not available in international journals. However, due to several factors most locally published journals are not indexed and hence lack visibility and limited usage. The study was conducted to examine the accessibility and use of locally published journals by graduate students and academic staff at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). The main objective of the study was to assess the current status of local journals and investigate factors affecting accessibility and their usage. Data collection methods were questionnaire, interview and observation. Sampling procedures used to select respondents included purposive and stratified random sampling techniques. A sample size of 80 respondents was selected, among these there were 50 academic staff and 30 graduate students. The study revealed that 10% of graduate students and academic staff use local journals for research activities and the remaining 53% were not using the journals at the UDSM library. The study found that the major problems for underutilization of local journals include lack of awareness, missing issues, poor management, delayed publication and lack of user training. The study recommends increasing accessibility of local journals regionally and internationally through indexing in Africa Journals Online (AJOL), digitization and establishment of indexing and abstracting database in Tanzania. It further recommends enhancing Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) so that it can be used to search articles from local journals.
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Keywords
Information services, Scholarly journals, Graduate students, Academic staff, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Citation
Ramadhani, Z. (2011). Accessibility and use of Tanzania local journals by Graduate students and academic staff at the University of Dar es Salaam. Master dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam. Available at (http://41.86.178.3/internetserver3.1.2/search.aspx?formtype=advanced)