Perception and attitude of postgraduate students on institutional repositories: case of st. Pauls’ university in limuru, kenya

ABSTRACT

Increased research output in academic institutions has led to generation of lots of research content, thus bringing about issues on storage and preservation of the research content, these has led to establishment of institutional repositories by institutions of higher learning. The aim of this study was to establish the perception and attitude of the postgraduate students of St Paul’s University Limuru Campus towards IRs. The study was guided by the following objectives: to assess use of IRs by postgraduate students, establish users’ perception and attitude on access of the content in the IR, to evaluate the perception and attitudes of users on relevance of the IRs and to find out the challenges facing use of IRs at St Paul’s University. The target population was 160 respondents who comprised Masters Students from different courses offered, PhD students and library staff. The study used interviews and questionnaires to collect data. Data collected was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative data was presented in summarized prose and by precise discussion while quantitative data was presented using percentages, pie charts and bar-graphs. The study established the following findings:- that the IRs are inadequately utilized by the postgraduate students, that the content of the current IR has benefited the students but there is still negative perception and attitude towards the IRs among the postgraduates. The study also established that poor internet connection was a major concern to students who lamented that they used a lot of time trying to download and save the relevant content searched for from the IRs, this negated their attitude towards IRs. The study recommended that the ICT department of the university establishes a way of improving internet accessibility, which in return will improve the attitudes of a PGs towards use of IRs, lecturers contribution to content in the IRs would greatly improve the perception of students on the information available. Consequently the study drew the following conclusions: the content currently available in the IRs is sufficient but inaccessible in due poor internet connectivity therefore, cannot positively be embraced by the postgraduate students; the study also established that more awareness through institutional repositories sessions were necessary to enhance students skills on access to the IRs content