Information Literacy Skills of the Faculty and Students of Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences (PBDSUHS), Rohtak

Abstract

Information literacy is recognized as an important aspect of medical education. Information retrieval and critical appraisal of information have become important because medical education standards require medical students and residents to possess those skills. The present study is an attempt to know the information literacy skills of the Faculty and Students of Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak. The study was based on the data collected through questionnaires. The collected data was analyzed using MS-Excel. It was found that all the respondents were able to specify their information needs and were aware of the different kinds of information sources and online databases. It was found that faculty members were more able to make use of the retrieved information than the students. A significant number of respondents overestimated their skills by rating themselves very high and high in accessing information in electronic format while they were unfamiliar with basic search technique used for searching information in an online database. It was recommended that users’ need oriented Information Literacy Programmes should be organized regularly. For the effective conduction of information literacy programme, more collaboration of medical library professionals with the faculty and students was recommended. Beside this, it was also suggested that information literacy may be added as a subject in the health science curriculum so as to make the medical professionals information literate.