Analyzing Undergraduate Nursing Students' Electronic Document Use and Document Reading Behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze undergraduate nursing students' electronic document use and reading behavior. To do this, a survey questionnaire was collected from 509 respondents who experienced reading behavior for the last semester. The results of this study show that nursing students' preference of electronic documents is higher than that of printed documents in general. They also prefer electronic documents to printed documents when they want to keep documents. Of respondents, about 94% or higher spent 30mins or more to find information and the main source to find information is 'Naver' search engine as the highest information source, and the place to access information is 'Home' as their highest information access location. In particular, the preference of the document 'on the move' is electronic documents and the main reason includes convenience and easiness to access and move the documents. The findings of this study expect to facilitate the understanding of undergraduate nursing students electronic document use and reading behavior so that it can be used to design and develop medical digital library services and tools more effectively and efficiently in medical area in the future. Furthermore, it expects to provide useful data in promoting user services in digital library in a whole.