Abstract :
University libraries invest a massive amount of resources in digitizing information for the Web, yet there is growing concern that much of this information is being underutilized. The present study uses the technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate university library website resources (ULWR) usage. We categorize users based on academic roles and then analyze them as subgroups in order to observe different adoption patterns across groups. A total of 299 usable responses was collected from four different universities and across three populations: undergraduate, master, and doctoral student/faculty groups. The findings show that different library users indeed access ULWR for different reasons, resulting in a need for tailored managerial efforts. Overall, the extended TAM explains undergraduate studentsʹ usage best; the explanatory power of the model is significantly lower for the doctoral student/faculty group. Some of the findings challenge results reported in TAM research in other fields. The unexpected findings may result from the application of the model to a different context. Detailed theoretical implications and managerial guidance are offered.
