ENGLISH

Abstract

As digital information resources available online are increasing at an exponential rate, several practices have evolved for the economic and effective delivery of such information to the end users. In this context, consortia-based information services have gathered momentum world over during the last few years. Though, there are several library consortia in India, UGC Infonet is mainly meant for universities controlled by UGC and CeRA is meant for agricultural universities. This paper discusses utilisation of consortia-based digital information resources by the post graduate and doctoral students of the Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur. Results show that cent percent of the students were familiar with the use of digital information resources available online and 87.14 per cent of them used CeRA. Eighty two per cent students were acquainted with CeRA and learned the required skills for the access and use of digital information resources through curriculum-based courses like ‘library and information services’, ‘research methodology’, etc. The students in general would like to strengthen the CeRA services by adding more resources and facilities.