Are Research Scholars of University of Kashmir Information Literate? A Story from Post-Graduation to Ph.D.

To enhance the services of any library, it is important to understand the awareness level of users regarding library resources and efficient utilization thereof. This awareness level is the information literacy that plays an important role in the developing quality education and research environment in any institution. Keeping these things in mind, the current study attempts to assess and compare the literacy level of scholars of University of Kashmir. The study aims to find out the use of resources and enquire about the importance of library and its orientation programs. The study was carried out in University of Kashmir. The investigators gathered data through questionnaire and later analyzed the same using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics software version 21. The investigators managed to get the data from 230 scholars. The data gathered reveals that library usage increases when students enter into research. Further, the use of print and electronic resources increased significantly indicating that the library needs to focus on developing the print as well as e-collection continuously. So, the story of information literacy starts with students preferring printed books mostly during their post-graduation (PG) while the same are also used in their Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees along with printed journals and printed theses as well. The preference of electronic resources also changes from PG to Ph.D. as scholars mostly prefer to use e-journals, e-books, e-databases, and e-repositories during their research. In addition, the capability of scholars also showed significant improvement in finding, accessing, evaluating, and effectively using information during their research. As the student enters into serious research, the importance of library shows significant improvement.