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What is your approach to using library resources to meet the needs of your students and faculty?
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A well equipped quality collection of print and e resources with appropriate quality services is essential factor to meet the needs of the students and staff.
there are methods to find the usability of the resources and the need of the users.
1. Explore your library collections to the users (it will help them to know the availability of the resources then they can able to access)
- List out collections and display it (dept wise summary is also helpful)
- send the list of collections to the HOD's and teaching faculty
- create a library blog and ask the users to send their comments on the library usage
2. Get the feedback from the users directly (questionnaire/survey) or indirectly (through oral conversation)
Dear Sri Kuntal Chatterjee,
Thanks for your post.
Truly and practically speaking,"APPROACHES" to the usage of Library resources may vary from person to person and case to case because of diversity in the nature of collection and clientele. I feel this might be the crisp reply in response to your query.
However, I have observed that some of the forum members specially Mr. Selvam M.has explained the issue in reply. As I know he is quite well versed in such issues with commendable qualities of organizational & IT skills. I think his reply is based on a question "HOW TO USE use Library resources..." As you can well understand, reply for the second question sort of differs from the earlier one. He has judiciously sorted out the issues and identified each of them and explained.
The first thing is to make the users aware of your resources. The users must know what is available in the Library
Then make them become familiar with their usage; which relates to know which material is required for which purpose. For instance what are the purpose of using Encyclopedias and which one is required for a particular purpose (if you have varieties)For instance,there are fills edited International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Seligman edited Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, McGraw-Hill's Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, Encyclopedia of Biography also from McGraw-Hill and there is World Sports Encyclopedia too. Now amidst these each one have different focus now it is the job of the Library personnel to let the users know which one is for what information. Needless to say, that it is prerequisite for the Library peoples themselves to have a clear idea which one each of the documents deal with!! In practical life we always prefer those grocery shops where the owner can readily reply about the items he has in his stock and their preferential usage like this pulse cooks faster or this brand of spice has better tastes and aroma.
You may be having several bibliographic databases. The Library people should know what material holds what and how to extract the pertinent information faster; the searching strategies and assigning the key words for particular searches so that "precisions" or "recall values" varies according to users' needs. PUBMED, AIDSLINE, CANCERLIT & PHI databases in the field of Medical Sciences and all of them hold literature relating to, say, "Epidemiology of Incidents of AIDS as an opportunistic infection among Cancer patients" Now the Library professionals MUST have a hands-on experience & expertise to guide the users to use the most pertinent database!
There is a concept in LIS which is called "anticipated demand" and it need to publicize your resources to attract the user and to make them known of your resources. Mr. Selvam M. has very nicely elicited it in his post and I don't need to repeat them.In the era of Cyber technology, many arduous tasks easier and fast. The Library people should make full use of this advantage for optimum satisfaction to their clients.
Sincerely
Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta
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