Use of Smartphones by Research Scholars in Enhancing Digital Information Literacy Skills: A Study Kumbar Mallinath1, Niveditha B.2,*, Umesha M.L.3 1Professor, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Mysore, Manasagangotri, Mysore, Karnataka, India 2UGC, Junior Research Fellow, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Mysore, Manasagangotri, Mysore, Karnataka, India 3Assistant Librarian, National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Ministry of Rural Development, Hyderabad, India *Corresponding author email id: niveditha.jb@gmail.com
Online published on 7 April, 2020. Abstract The usage of smartphones has proliferated in recent years. Smartphones have enabled the users in the academic community to access a wealth of information at any time and at any place. With such an accelerated adoption of smartphones at the touch of the fingertips, the authors in this paper sought to investigate the usage of smartphones by research scholars in University of Mysore, Mysuru for their research and academic purpose. The study brings about the purpose of using smartphones, browsers used to search information in smartphones, mobile applications used for research, advantages and limitations of using smartphones. It was evident from the study that all research scholars used smartphones and were connected to the Internet and nearly 77.17% respondents used smartphones to read books and articles related to their research. The most usedbrowser was Google Chrome (89.67%) and all the respondents (100%) used typed keywords to search for information on smartphones. The reliability of information obtained was checked only by 50% of the respondents. It was also observed that the major benefit for using smartphones was their immediate access to information and the barrier was their screen size. The results from this study reflect the research scholars’ exponential adoption of the smartphone for information access. Top Keywords Smartphones, Digital information literacy skills, Research scholars, Mobile applications, Reliability. Top |