Use, purpose and usage ranking of online information resources by university research students

Online Information Resources (OIR) are getting popularity amongst academicians, particularly research students. This study is an attempt to investigate the use and purview of online information resources by postgraduate students of public and private sector universities of Lahore - Pakistan. Through questionnaires, data was collected from 570 research students with the response rate of 463 (81.22%). Data revealed that post-graduate research students prefer to use social networking sites with good frequency and PhD students prefer to use journal and magazines, to fulfill their information and knowledge needs. Due to its usage, “social networking sites” were ranked at # 1 by university research students. The data also revealed that “Research Information Needs” is the most preferred purpose to use OIRs by university research students.