Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour among the Faculty Members of the Private Universities in Udaipur Division of Rajasthan State A Study

Abstract

A library, regardless of its size or style, is principally a facility institute that performs three essential activities to suit the needs of its users: information procurement, organizing and processing, and distribution. Users are the most important components of libraries because they carry out all of these functions. The necessity of users has been highlighted in Dr. S. R. Ranganathan s Five Laws of Library Science. The importance of users is emphasized in the second law of library science, quotEvery user his or her books.quot Academic libraries, particularly university libraries play a lot in the overall development of education and research activities of universities by fulfilling the information needs of users. University faculty members need the newest information in their respective fields of interest for their knowledge development. The present study has been based on this premise, especially focusing on the information needs and seeking behaviour among the faculty members of the private universities in Udaipur division of Rajasthan state. Eight objectives are identified and five hypotheses have been formulated for the study. Large numbers of literature are available on the information need and seeking behaviour of users of different types of libraries. However, 65 numbers of relevant literature have been reviewed for the present study. newlineThe present study brought within its limits the faculty members of the private universities and their information need and information seeking behaviour and is geographically confined to the Udaipur division of Rajasthan state. The survey method has been followed in the present study to collect the data from the respondents. A structured questionnaire was prepared and administered among 592 faculty members of seven private universities in Udaipur division of Rajasthan state and a total of 407 (68.75%) of them filled the questionnaire and returned it to the researcher. newline