INFORMATION LITERACY AMONG USERS OF SELECT IIT AND IIM LIBRARIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

We live in an information intensive world. Every human being seeks and uses information to meet all the fundamental requirements of life. Information literacy is essential for individuals to achieve their personal, social and educational goals. It is a key factor in producing effective lifelong learners and creating knowledge-based societies. The development of such skills takes place throughout a citizen‟s life especially during the educational years when librarians and experts in information management play major roles in facilitating information literacy. However, information literacy needs to be considered in education. This thesis is an attempt for introduce the science, technology and management-related information available to students, research scholars and faculty members in a more reliable form. The study shows that an information literacy programme is inevitable and necessary for students, research scholars and faculty members to make them more information literate. Information literacy instructions and training programmes need to be organized on a regular basis owing to the rapid growth of electronic and web-based information resources. Management and technology library professionals should do efforts to develop complete training programme or information literacy course not only for PG students and research scholars but for faculty members and UG students also, so that the existing gap between the capabilities and skills of the students and faculty can be improved. The library and information science professionals and teachers can do a lot to achieve this goal. The thesis is structured in the following chapters: Chapter 1 presents an overview and nature of research study undertaken and also provides a comprehensive explanation of information literacy. The chapter begins with information literacy, its evolution, different concepts, definition, objectives, scope and significance, and need and limitations of the study. In Chapter 2 efforts have been made to provide an overview of the research done on the various facets of information literacy. This chapter presents an overall review of studies conducted both abroad and in India in a chronological order. Chapter 3 discusses the exploration of the methodological framework of the study. ix Chapter 4 includes the process and outcome of an exploratory survey done in select IIT and IIM libraries. This chapter represents the analysis and interpretation of data collected through various tools. The researcher interacted with almost all the librarians and users of the libraries and assisted them in filling the questionnaires. A personal visit to the libraries helped the researcher to gather more information and see the actual services provided by them. The collected data has been organized and tabulated by simple statistical methods. The purpose of analysis is to shape data to intelligible forms, that the relation of research problems can be studied and tested. Chapter 5 discusses the major findings, which have been drawn on the basis of data collected from the four institutes under the study. Tenability of the hypotheses is checked with the help of independent t-test as a statistical tool and suggestions are provided to improve the information literacy skills in research scholars and PG students in the IIT and IIM libraries. At the end some recommendation and possible areas for further research also have been mentioned in this chapter.