Electronic Resources: Their Importance, Characteristics, Types, Issues and Challenges and Comparison with Print Resources—: An Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to know the importance, characteristics, types, issues and challenges of e-resources and also know the comparisons with print resources. E-resources contain e-books, e-journals, e-magazine, e-thesis and dissertation, e-newspapers, e-reference sources, etc.; all these resources are stored in the computer as an electronic form, which is called a database. E-resources are becoming very important for each and every library these days as they are more up-to-date and can be accessed anywhere across the world. Such resources add value while conducting research and development activities, thus this topic was selected to study. Increasing awareness of e-resources inlibraries has been witnessed globally due to the impact of technological growth and the demand of users that keep changing due to their needs and interests.E-resources have increasingly become vital for the libraries to address the increased demand of the users. Success of usage of e-resources sorely depends on the ability to acquire, create, store, share and utilize that kind of knowledge. Key benefits have been documented regarding e-resources such as round-the-clock availability, accessibility by multiple users and quick information retrieval by users who are remotely located. However, electronic resources have some key bottlenecks that continue to bother librarians, which may include the effect of changing technology which requires constant technology updates, security issues related to unauthorized access and virus attack, copyright, data migration issues and lack of skilled manpower on the part of librarians.