Journal of

Background and Aim: Technical videos and images are of great importance in learning different topics of medical sciences. This study is conducted to determine the effect of videos and images in learning from students’ point of view and also their problems in accessing them.
Materials and Methods: This is a survey study. Data were collected by a self-made questionnaire and the population included postgraduate students of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences in the first semester of 94-95.
Results: More than half of the students stated that images and videos have an average or more-than-average effect on their learning achievements. There is no significant relationship between students’ fields of study and their feeling the need for specialized images and videos. To get advice, they refer more to their professors or classmates than to librarians. A large number of responding students had not heard even the names of specialized image-and-video databases or they had never used them before. Low-speed internet and filtering of sites are the most important factors in students’ failure to access their required images and videos while students themselves have ranked ‘unfamiliarity with specialized databases’ as the fourth important factor.
Conclusion: The students know the importance of images and videos in learning achievements, but since they don’t know the professional databases and don’t have an appropriate interaction with librarians, they resort to general search-engines and, as a result, they face with blocked sites and are deprived from what they really want.