Awareness of University Library Services and Resources Among Postgraduate Students of Selected Universities of J&K: A Comparative Assessment

Abstract

University libraries are vital organs for universities to support academics and research related activities. Effective use of resources and services of any academic library particularly university libraries will enhance the research and academic tasks. These libraries fulfil the information needs of users associated with diverse field of studies. These libraries provide the varied sources of information and different services to the users. The efficiency of academic library depends upon the awareness and familiarity of the users with different services and resources of libraries. Therefore, the current study is an attempt to gauge the awareness of users of selected university libraries, total 4 universities were selected two state universities and two central universities from Jammu and Kashmir. Survey method was adopted to fulfil the objectives of the study and questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. Sampling method applied was simple random sampling. The sample size was 600, equally selected from 4 universities. Data was tabulated by using widely used statistical tool SPSS. The descriptive as well as inferential statistical tests were followed to test the data, mean, median, standard deviation, comparative analysis was carried out by applying one way Annova statistical test. The major findings of the study were 48 percent library users had visited library frequently. Based on the overall mean of x 1.92 and M 2.00, it can be concluded that the users are well aware about the services of concerned libraries. Further, based on the overall mean of x boxed times 1.90 and M 2.00, it can be concluded that the users are well aware about the resources of the concerned libraries. While applying comparative statistical techniques on mean scores of services and resources it was found that only current awareness service (CAS) and online public access cataloguing (OPAC) awareness were statistically significant (p<0.05). Furthermore, It is evident from the results that all the resource awareness parameters were statistically significant excluding Reference Books Awareness (RBA having P value greater than 0.05 (p=0.055 > 0.05).