University Students Motives and Challenges in Utilising Institutional Repository Resources

One of the core functions of an academic institution is to generate knowledge, disseminate it to the intended audiences, and preserve it for future use. Academic institutions are now establishing Institutional Repositories (IRs) to collect produced resources to facilitate accessibility, dissemination, utilization, and management of intellectual materials produced within an institution. This study aimed to assess postgraduate students motives for utilizing IR resources and the challenges they encounter when utilizing IR resources at the University of Dar es Salaam. This study was conducted using a descriptive study design whereby it used both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The population of this study comprised postgraduate students, librarians, and ICT personnel from the University of Dar es Salaam. A sample of 102 respondents was drawn conveniently and purposively for this study. Data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, as well as a review of documentary sources. Quantitative data were analyzed through a Version 16 Statistics Package for Social Science and qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The findings indicate that access to fulltext documents, the relevance of IR resources, and easy searching of the materials in the repository system motivate the utilization of IR resources. However, several challenges impede the utilization of these resources including unreliable internet access, inaccessibility of full-text and lack of guiding policy have been revealed as the major challenges toward utilization of IR resources. The study recommends training postgraduate students on the general use of IRs. Also, the University management should develop an IR policy that will guide the utilization of IR resources