Attitudes and Perceptions of Postgraduate Medical Trainees towards the Library User Education (LUE) Programme

Abstract

Library user education aims to make library users proficient in research and lifelong learners. The impact of library user education extends beyond the classroom and orientation, allowing users to engage themselves and effectively identify, access, retrieve, and use library information resources to their advantage. It also raises awareness of the library's available information resources.The Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM) library at the University of Colombo has identified the importance of acquiring user perceptions through user education programmes. This study aimed to assess postgraduate trainees' perceptions and investigate the impact of the user education programme conducted by the PGIM library. The library user education programmes considered in this study are the PGIM library resources and services, which include the library digital repository, literature review, E-Resources, avoid in gplagiarism and managing references. The survey research design was used for the study, while the questionnaire instrument was used for data collection.The study population comprises all users participated for the library user education programme in 2020 -2021. The study found out that the user education programme had positively affected the postgraduate trainees' use of the library and academic performance. Awareness, accessibility, and utilisation of library services and resources impact the library user education programme.The study also emphasised the significance of ongoing library user education programmes in developing research skills among medical students in order for them to develop medical information retrieval, supporting research work and other findings provided to medical trainees, which supports their professional life.