Information Gathering Behaviour of Students of Government Diploma Institutes of Odisha through Print Media

Abstract

The act of seeking information by the learners has few tenets which play important roles in upgrading collections, services, and facilities to effectively develop a library. The study investigates the information channels preferred by the students of Institutes imparting Diplomas in the Government sector in Odisha. The study adopts a questionnaire method to collect data on the use of print resources only for 3 weeks in January 2020 with the due permission of the faculty members of the institutions. While considering the optimum number of responses 400 sets of questionnaires have been distributed among the community of students out of which 351 reciprocated. The collected data has been analysed by using different statistical methods like simple percentage, mean, correlation coefficient, etc. The main objective of the paper is to find out the attributes of preference of print media over other formats, to compare the perceived values of print formats by the students of two branches i.e. civil engineering and mechanical engineering and to analyse the expectations of students from the library services. To establish the validity of the objectives, two hypotheses have been framed and tested. It is found that out of the four major formats of sources viz., print, electronic, audio, and audiovisual, the print resources have some unique advantages for which they are still preferred but the library needs to update its collections to meet the expectations of its users.