E-resources Consortia: An Urgent Need for College Libraries in Cachar District: A Case Study

Abstract

College education in India, as of now, is facing pressures of increased enrollment, changing educational policies and the challenging task of imparting higher education to a vast human resource potential in the age group of 14 to 24, enabling them to participate in 21st Century global knowledge race. Simultaneous to this situation, unprecedented change in information scenario, current trends in electronic publishing, advanced technologies facilitating faster information access, concept of globalization of knowledge have altogether made the information environment more complex.

Higher education aims to achieve a comprehensive and well-rounded development in the life of the students. This is not possible through formal, limited-time class lectures alone; exposure to a vast collection of books and educational resources is needed for that. So, a well-equipped library is an essential component of the higher education structure. To what extent our college libraries are prepared to cope up with the changed information environment or remaining relevant towards augmenting higher educational process is an issue of serious thought.

This paper presents a survey report on the college libraries of Cachar District in Assam. The study shows that most of the libraries, under survey, suffer from inadequacy of library holdings, budgetary crunch, non availability of ICT Tools and poor infrastructure. To overcome this situation and to make the library services relevant to the institutional goals, it is necessary that the college libraries become well-equipped and more responsive to users’ need, and in doing so, formation of E-Resource Consortia is probably the most viable solution.