Information Seeking Behaviour of Law Students in the Changing Digital Environment

Abstract

The information environment has greatly impacted on teaching, learning and research methods of higher education worldwide and India is no exception. The new technologies have facilitated smooth and systematic transformation of data into digital format. This has changed the process of access, retrieve and use of information by students and researchers. The purpose of this study is to examine the information seeking behaviour of students of two law colleges of Mumbai. To understand the information seeking behaviour of law students the concerned literature has been reviewed and questionnaire was randomly distributed to get the responses. The study mainly concentrates on frequency of visit to the library, purpose of information seeking, computer acquaintance, amount of time spent on information gathering activities, problem faced in information seeking, etc. The results of the study reveal that books are still most heavily used resources by the students. Majority of the students are familiar with using offline and online legal databases. However, the students of both the colleges face the problem of information overload on internet and lack of skills to search information. Hence, the study recommends that formal users training programme shall be conducted to optimise the use of information sources and services.

10.14429/djlit.35.1.8099