Social and Institutional Barriers to Electronic Database Adoption: A Case Study of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and University of Ghana

Electronic databases have become an invaluable component of academic libraries collections today because they provide relevant, accurate and up-to-date information that can be accessed at the user’s convenience. Owing to this, Universities in Ghana subscribe to the host of these databases. The researcher set out to investigate the use of electronic databases by postgraduate students from the College of Humanities and/or Social Sciences and the College of Health Sciences in KNUST and UG. The study assesses the level at which students from both universities are conversant with such databases and issues that surround their use through a questionnaire administered to 131 students at KNUST and 297 students at (UG). A response rate of 95.4% was obtained for the former and 74.4% for the latter. The responses from these respondents were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version. The findings suggested that while students may possess sufficient skills and confidence in using electronic databases, it is the institutional factors in terms of accessibility, infrastructure, training, and support which would determine whether they would use these resources.