A Study on User Education Programme and Library Usage in Periyar University and Pondicherry University

Abstract

Academic library is the ‘heart of university’. The main objective of the academic library is to make the learning process more effective. To obtain this, it facilitates a good physical environment, provide affluent library collections and services. It determines the library rules and regulations as a guiding philosophy on how to use the library environment, collections and resources. It educates the guiding philosophy through user education programmes/library orientation programmes and expects all the students to comply with the library rules and use the library in an effective manner. An assessment about the programme mix, awareness level of rules, library usage, opinion on library collections and resources and feedback platforms used by the students’ who attended the programmes will provide more insights to the library and help the library to attain its objective. To investigate this, a study is conducted on a total of 119 students from Periyar University and Pondicherry University who attended the programmes. The total percentage of male students included in the study is 60.50% and female student is 39.50%. The minimum age of the student included in the study is 18 and maximum age is 34. Students within the age group 22–25 were the major respondents of the study which has 69.75% in the total study sample. About 63.87% of students were doing post-graduation in the universities and they were majority in the study. On considering the course discipline category, the arts category students is 50.42%, science category students is 36.97% and the other (engineering) category students is 10.08%. Among the 119 respondents, 65.55% attended the user education programme, 18.49% attended the user orientation programme and 15.97% attended the library tour. 95.80% of students are aware about the library rules. Among the 119 students, 48.74% visits library daily, 24.37% visits at least twice within a week, 9.24% visits weekly, 5.04% visits fornightly, 5.88% visits monthly once and 6.72% visits occasionally. The purpose of visiting library for ‘subject knowledge’ holds the first rank and ‘writing article for publication’ holds the 8th rank. Student's opinion about library space, facilities, staff, resources and services shows that the satisfaction level in Periyar University is 73.43% and in Pondicherry University, it is 70.68%. On the total, 52.83% of the respondents mentioned that they will ‘talk to librarian’ to express their feedback. 41.51% of the respondents mentioned that they will use ‘Suggestion book’ to record their feedback.