Abstract:

Explosion in information science and information system (IS) technology has brought dramatic changes in learning and library system environments. Through the passage from physical library to digital library era, the use of academic digital library systems does witness the spectacular impact on academic societies’ way of performing their study/research. Despite the wide spread of the use digital library in academia, research of the awareness of such system is still scarce. Much of research has documented in the awareness of human-computer-interaction, as well as on Internet usage but little was concentrated on digital library. This paper highlights an exploratory research on examining the demographic differences in the awareness of academic digital library among higher institutions in Malaysia. Using a structured questionnaire, a total of 944 students and academic staffs volunteered in the survey method opted. Findings indicated that more than three quarters of the participants aware and use their university digital library. Besides of this higher awareness, significant relationships were observed between digital library awareness and demographic profiles (gender, age, race and university). The findings provide practical implication of guiding library science researchers as well as librarians in tackling issues on awareness divide that might lead to different impact of the usage, attitudes and appreciation towards digital library.