Usage of Electronic Resources Available Under UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium by Assam University Library Users

Abstract

The traditional functions of libraries had undergone various changes in present century and E-Resources have great importance in libraries and amongst the library users. The present study has been undertaken with an attempt to evaluate the usage pattern of electronic resources made available in the Assam University Library under the UGC- INFONET E-Journals/ Digital Library Consortium of UGC/INFLIBNET amongst the research scholars and teachers of Northeastern Region of India with special reference to Assam University, Silchar. The faculty, research scholars and students are mainly drawn from different parts of North Eastern States and few from other parts of the country which represent truly cosmopolitan population. For that purpose, survey method has been adopted by the investigators, which comprises of administration of questionnaire, Observation of the participants, and interview of some of the participants for knowing the opinion of the respondents in respect of usage of electronic resources (e-journals/e-books/databases) for their academic and research activities. The self designed questionnaire comprising of 15 questions has been distributed amongst the randomly selected samples .The samples comprises of faculty members, research scholars,UG/PG Students and officers / staff. The filled up questionnaires have been collected from the respondents for the data analysis and interpretations. On the basis of filled up questionnaire the data has been analysed and tabulated using SPSS Software. For data analysis percentage technique, has been adopted. Due to paucity of space important results findings have been enumerated in brief. The present work was carried out during July- December 2009. Therefore the present investigation is delimited to the randomly selected population of Assam University Library Users who are regularly visiting Assam University Library and using the Internet for accessing to the e-resources available under the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortia of INFLIBNET/ UGC. The questionnaire was distributed to 350 samples, out of which 319 respondents have responded. The same study may be carried out on the larger section of population covering other universities of North Eastern Region of India to get more generalized and authentic findings. The findings of the present study may be taken as the preliminary findings from a pilot study. The paper highlights the important survey findings in respect of Internet Awareness, Internet Use Pattern and attitude of library users towards the electronic resources, which have been made available to them under UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium. Besides this, some faced by the respondents have also been discussed and few suggestions and recommendations have also been enumerated in brief..