Gender Differences of ICT Skills Among LIS Professionals in Universities of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

The purpose of the chapter is to investigate the gender differences of ICT skills of LIS professionals working in the Universities of Tamil Nadu. The study covered 47 universities including 19 state universities, 2 central universities, and 26 deemed universities. In the present study, the data was collected from the respondents through a structured questionnaire using survey method and adopted simple random sampling. The questionnaire contains attitudes of communication skills, use of ICT and related gadgets, level of awareness/skill in the computer applications/services, attitude towards ICT implications, problems of implications of ICT, and areas of ICT skills where training is required among male and female respondents. Totally, 441 respondents are selected from these 47 universities including 325 male and 116 female respondents. The study used SPSS Ver. 23 was used for performing necessary statistical analysis means, s Ranks, Independent ‘T' Test, and Chi-Square Analysis the collected data to draw necessary inferences. It is brought to light that 100% of male and female respondents agree that they would like to know more about ICT. Around 90% of male and female respondents agree that ICT helps them to present research articles in the seminars/workshops/conferences and find it easy to select appropriate ICT resources related to work environment. About 85-90% of both female and male respondents agree that ICT motivates the library staff to learn effectively, it saves the time of the library staff in many ways, it provides high level security for library resources, and it facilitates easy information exchanges. Further, the chapter also provided a platform to LIS professionals to find out the area of focus to learn and update their ICT skills in digital environment and electronic resources by LIS professionals for efficient delivery of library services for the betterment of the library as a whole.