The present study intended to analyze and compare electronic and printed journals usage by faculty members and postgraduate students of Shiraz School of Science. This research is of a descriptive and survey type. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The study population included 65 faculty members and 130 postgraduate students in Shiraz School of Science in the 2009-2010 academic year.
The results of the study showed that both faculty members and postgraduate students make use of e-journals more than printed journals. Comparisons between the two cases reveal that faculty members make more use of e-journals than postgraduate students. Both groups confirm the importance of each of printed and electronic journals at “high” level but faculty members regard e-journals as more important and prefer use of e-journals. 79.9% of respondents believe that electronic form is a suitable substitute for printed form of journals. The findings also show that e-journals and printed journals meet the information needs of respondents respectively at “high” level and less than “average level”. Respondents introduce finding specific information, authoring and translating book and papers, and conducting research as their most important reasons in using both formats of journals. The most notable obstacles towards making optimum use of e-journals in view of respondents are not being informed of existence of required e-journals, lack of information about the resources available at e-journal databases and absence of the e-journals related to their fields of study. Although respondents totally declare their skill in making use of e-journals at “fairly high” level, faculty members are more skilled than postgraduate students. Generally, 64.4% of respondents are in need of learning use of e-journals while postgraduate students seem to be more in need of such a skill.