In a study by Zhang, Ye and Liu (2011) it was found that electronic resources are used for the purpose of conducting scientific research, lecturing, and for self-development. Bar-Ilan, et al… (2003) conducted an extensive survey of the senior academic staff of the Israeli University on their use of electronic journals and databases. The major findings were that the use of electronic resources is already widespread among the respondents and more than 50% found the electronic services indispensable. Disparities were found in usage patterns between the different disciplines.
A t-test analysis was conducted by Ibrahim (2006) to measure the use of e-resources and detect factors that determine effective and frequent use. A criterion of less than 0.05 was used to determine the significance of use. Figures show that frequency of use of e-resources was significantly low for most types of e-resources. The least frequently used e-resources were e-books (t. = 2.10, p < 0.05), the online catalogue (t. = 2.65, p. < 0.05) and bibliographic databases (t. = 2.60, < p. 0.05). For comparison, online reference works (t. = 2.86, p < 0.05), e-journals (t. = 2.70, p. < 0.05) and full-text articles (t. = 2.78 p. < 0.05) were found to be more popular, even though they still fell below the anticipated frequency in the survey's set mean.
. 2.4.1 Availability of E-database
In Nigeria, the national university commission (2010) reported that educational trust fund (ETF) now known as tertiary educational trust fund (tetfund) have been able to subsidered the payment of online databases school as Ebsco host resources for universities ,polytechnic and colleges of education. The EIR databases in libraries is an opportunity open for university libraries in developing nations like Nigeria to bridge the knowledge gap and move toward a digital knowledge based society. However ,the study of OKIY(2005),Tiemo and Ateboh (2015)showed that lack that lack of funds have limited university libraries in Nigeria in providing EIR databases and other facilities to users .as a result of this ,libraries in developing countries opt for free EIR database on the internet ,school as the open access journals, open access is free of charge for readers that are registered with the resources databases. they allow library users to freely read, download copy and acknowledge the author in their work (Kwan,2003; Ricardo and merce 2004).the internet connectivity that enable libraries render EIR database services to lecturers and student is slow. Chigbu and Dim (2012) affirmed that the internet connectivity is far below what is obtainable countries
The studies of Otoknefor and kari (2008) and nok (2006)showed that these libraries in Nigeria are gradually developing their electronic resources databases collection and the major databases that can be fond are access to global online research in agriculture (AGORA),health internet work access to research initiative (HNARI) and online access to research in the environment (OARE), directory of open access journal (DOAJ) and EBSCO host resources .it cold be possible because they are free access
2.4.2 Purpose of E-databases
The purpose of setting up libraries is to acquire, process, store, preserve and make available current and relevant print and electronic materials that will meet the need of its user at appropriate time. Effective use of library materials in both print and electronic resources is expected to enhance the quality of teaching and research by academic staff of any institution.in Nigeria, the purpose of computer terminals in information searching is gradually gaining popularity and so the students need to be computer literate. thus ,many Nigeria university libraries are striving to be fully automated while some are stil in the process of computerization. To derive maximum expectation from the increasingly electronic library use environment, the user of Nigerian university libraries need to be computer literate.
(Emwanta and Nwabo,2013) electronic resources aim provide a number of benefits over print resources. these benefits include the fact that electronic resources are often faster to consult than print indexes especially when searching retrospectively, and they are straight forward when wishing to use combination of keywords. they open up the possibility of searching multiple files at a time .Electronic resources can be printed, searched and saved to be repeated or consulted at a later date. they are updated more often than printed resources .
Dadzie (2007) cited in egberongbe (2011) writes that electronic resources are invaluable research tools that complement the print based resources in a traditional library setting.so therefore E-databases in a library is expected to the user due to geographical location or finances, access to more current information and provision of extensive links to additional resources related contents.
2.5 Benefits of the usage of E-databases by Lecturers in University Libraries
