Evaluation of Use of Consortium of e-Resources in Agriculture in Context of Kerala Agricultural University

Abstract

As digital information resources available online are increasing at an exponential rate, several practiceshave evolved for the economic and effective delivery of such information to the end users. In this context,consortia-based information services have gathered momentum world over during the last few years. Though,there are several library consortia in India, UGC Infonet is mainly meant for universities controlled by UGC andCeRA is meant for agricultural universities. This paper discusses utilisation of consortia-based digital informationresources by the post graduate and doctoral students of the Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur. Resultsshow that cent percent of the students were familiar with the use of digital information resources availableonline and 87.14 per cent of them used CeRA. Eighty two per cent students were acquainted with CeRA andlearned the required skills for the access and use of digital information resources through curriculum-basedcourses like ‘library and information services’, ‘research methodology’, etc. The students in general would liketo strengthen the CeRA services by adding more resources and facilities.

doi: 10.14429/djlit.32.2.1404