Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
Rapid growth of technology change the way of people to search, acquire, arrange and retrieve of information. The impact of technology has greatly affected on information searching pattern of college students. It’s a high time for traditional libraries to change their approach as the availability of the digital resources is growing day by day. Librarian has the responsibility to identify what kind of information needed by the users and how it can be provide them effectively. Thus academic libraries need to upgrade their facilities to cope up with the changing needs of users. Library need to implement more technology-based infrastructure to fulfil the growing desires of user. The product of this study would be helpful to gain information seeking awareness among the college students and the study may motivate library professionals to know the existing scenario of college libraries and it may be supportive to implement suitable plan and policy to improve existing library systems in keeping with the changing desire of users. Purpose: The main purpose of the study is to discover the information needs of Maharaja Bir Bikram college library users along with their information seeking behaviour and also establish the existing library scenario of the college. Objectives: To identify the information needs and searching behaviour of concerned college library users. And to discover the obstacles faces by the users while seeking information and provide appropriate suggestions to overcome the situation and to find out the level of user satisfaction. Methodology: For the present study a survey was conducted on Maharaja Bir Bikram College library users by the use of simple random sampling method with a set of questionnaire includes 15 questions. The primary data were collected from 301 respondents and the secondary data were gathered from previously published relevant literature. Collected data were presented in tabular form and Microsoft excel was used to analysed the data. Findings: The findings showed that maximum number of students visit library for access books to achieve academic success. It also discovered that most of the students are not aware about library collections and services as well as library e-resources therefore they preferred print materials as first choice. Problems faces by the respondents are non-availability of updated study materials, shortage of information searching skill, lack of cooperation from library staff, shortage of current information sources. The investigation enables that user are not more satisfied with their college library resources and services. Originality: The study is an original innovative work which has been created independently and not published anywhere.