Acesso e uso dos livros eletrônicos do Portal CAPES: um estudo exploratório na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The use of electronic books has sparked many discussions and concerned professionals and scientists from various fields of knowledge. However, the actual use and acceptance of electronic books by the Brazilian academic community have been little studied. The CAPES Portal of E-journals, created by the Coordination for Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), provides thousands of e-books to federal institutions of higher education, but the lack of user studies on the use of this collection raised questions such as: do users know about the existence of this source and are there barriers to access to this collection? This was an exploratory and descriptive study with a quantitative approach to make a diagnosis regarding the use of and user satisfaction with the service of e-books offered by the CAPES Portal. The study was conducted at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) with the objective of verifying if the user community has access to and uses the collection of e-books from the CAPES Portal. The guiding theoretical framework of the study included the user studies, the research on use of the CAPES Portal and studies on use of e-books. The data collection instrument was based on the Delone and McClean model of success of information systems, on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Based on these models a model to evaluate the success of the service of e-books of the CAPES Portal was built. The online questionnaire was applied to graduate and undergraduate students, and to the faculty at UFMG. The analysis of the data was performed using descriptive statistics. There were 683 responses to the online questionnaire at UFMG. Most respondents (73%) do not use the collection of e-books from the CAPES Portal of E-journals. Only 27% of the students and faculty know about and use the e-books service from the Portal of E-journals. The results show that most of those who know about and use the e-books are only partially satisfied with the quality of the search system and the quality or content of the collection at UFMG. As for the quality of the service offered by CAPES Portal, users are generally dissatisfied. Regarding the intention to use the collection of e-books from CAPES Portal, most users intend and plan to continue using the service in the coming months, and acknowledge that using more e-books could improve their performance, productivity and increase the effectiveness of their learning. The results also show the perceptions of non-users of the service on individual and institutional barriers to access and use of these resources in the academic environment. The main reasons cited by users for not using the collection are: the lack of a more significant dissemination of information about the e-book service in the institution as a whole; not knowing about the existence of service of e-books of the CAPES Portal; poor wifi network connection to access the e-books; the confusing search interface design by the CAPES Portal of e-books; lack of availability of electronic versions of books really important for academic activities.