Manoj Kumar Sinha

Use of electronic resources among research scholars and faculty members of university of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India: A survey

ICT has brought the revolutionary changes in the functioning of libraries and information centres. The impact of ICT including WWW and Internet is visible in every walk of life. The libraries are not the exception. Due to electronic publishing, many e-resources in the form of e-journals, e-books and online/off-line databases are being published. The academic libraries especially colleges and universities libraries have been procuring these resources for their libraries. Due to escalation in the cost of learning resources both printed and e-resources and financial problems the academic libraries are facing, the consortia models are being adopted and experimented for the procurement and access to e-resources by the colleges and universities. The first part of paper introduces the eresources, and its procurement under consortia models successfully implemented by INFLIBNET Centre since 2003. Under the UGC-INFONET Programme about 179 university libraries have been given access to e-resources which comprises of e-journals and online databases. The second part of the paper describes the use of e-resources by the research scholars and teachers of Allahabad University. In order to ascertain the usage of the journals by the research scholars and teachers of Allahabad University, the present study has been conceived to find out the use of e-resources which have been given access to the research scholars and teachers in the university campus mainly at Central Library and Departmental Libraries. To what extent the available e-resources are being utilized by the library users and what are their awareness level, usage pattern, preference of the publishers/journals etc. For this study survey method has been used using questionnaire as a data collection tool. This study has been carried out during January, 2015 to June, 2015. This is a preliminary pilot study conducted on smaller sample to ascertain the validity of the questionnaire. The simple random sampling technique has been adopted for the study. The findings of the study reveals that the library users belonging to younger generation have adopted the Internet, online/offline electronic resources or web resources very quickly and at the same time the elderly library users are not comfortable using Internet, social media and e-resources. They rely more on the traditional printed resources. In order to make the optimum use of the e-resources available for the university library users through consortia, extensive and frequent users awareness programmes needs to be organised by the library in collaboration with INFLIBNET and other agencies.

Usage of E-Resources available under INDEST-AICTE consortium by library users of NIT, Silchar, Assam

This present study has been conceived to study the status of usage of E-Resources available under INDEST-AICTE Consortium by the Library Users of NIT, Silchar. Descriptive Research Method (Case Study of NIT Library Users) was adopted using self designed questionnaire incorporating some modification from the previous study conducted on usage of e-resources available under UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium by Sinha (2010) [1]. The study was conducted on NIT Library Users which comprises of faculty members, Research Scholars, UG and PG Students perusing Engineering and Management Courses. The study comprises of administration of questionnaires to the participants for knowing their skills in accessing information/e-resources for their academic and research activities. Altogether 180 questionnaires were distributed to the respondents and 132 responses were received. The study was conducted during the period February to June 2013. The data collected from the administered questionnaire were analysed, tabulated and represented in graphical form using Microsoft Excel. The study shows that most of the respondents are aware of the INDEST-Consortium and are using e-resources, mainly the e-journals, frequently for seeking information. While analyzing data, it has been found that maximum users are using equally printed and electronic resources for their academic purposes. It is interesting to note that majority of users under study prefer e-resources while only a few of them prefer printed resources. Majority of respondents have suggested that the authority should provide adequate Internet Terminals with high speed of bandwidth for optimum utilisation of e-resources available under INDEST-AICTE Consortia.