Changing Role of Academic Libraries in the E-learning Environment: Issues and Challenges

The development of computer and network technology is changing the education scenario and transforming the teaching and learning process from the traditional physical environment to the digital environment. It is now possible to access vast amount of information online and enable one to one communication without the confines of place or time. While E-learning and teaching is unlikely to replace face-to-face training and education it is becoming an additional delivery method, providing new learning opportunities to many users. It is also causing an impact on library services as the increased use of ICT and web based learning technologies have paved the way for providing new ICT based services and resources to the users. Online learning has a crucial role in user education, information literacy programmes and in training the library professionals. It can help students become active learners, and libraries will have to play a greater role in this process of transformation. The significance of libraries within an institution has improved due to the fact that academic libraries and information services are now responsible for e-learning within their organization.

Professional Associations and Academic Librarianship in Kerala

The library professional in an academic institution has to anticipate the changing expectations of the users, and be flexible in adopting new skills and levels of awareness. Technology has drastically changed the way librarians define themselves and the way they think about their profession and the institutions they serve. In addition to the technical and professional skills, commitment to user centred services and skills for effective oral and written communication; they must have other skills, including business and management, teaching, leadership, etc. Eventually, library and information professionals in academic libraries need to update their knowledge and skills in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as they play the role of key success factor in enabling the library to perform its role as an information support system for the society.

Professional Skills and Competencies for Academic Librarian in an Electronic Environment

Development of new technologies in the field of library and information science especially in academic libraries has resulted in the need for library staff to be flexible in adopting new skills and levels of awareness. In addition to core technology skills, importance is to be given to other skills in communication, management, etc. This paper attempts to describe in brief the competencies and skills required for an academic library professional in the digital era .

Collection and Assets Management: One University Library’s Journey to the Future

Academic libraries worldwide have witnessed a number of trends and paradigm shifts over the last decade. It is vital for university libraries to develop a collection of high standards to satisfy academics and researchers for supporting the vision and mission of a university. The area of collection development and management is the most important part of any library. This paper reports on the problems and prospects of collection and asset management of the University Library of Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). The insight for the paper comes from the authors’ first-hand experience supported by literature review. Detailed information regarding the purchase of books, serials, policies regarding the acquisition, and changing trends and problems were collected from the official records with the help of a structured data sheet. The study discovers the current trends in collection and asset management in CUSAT and point out the changes likely to be adopted in future.

lntemet utilization and academic activities of faculty members in the universities of Kerala : an analytical study

This thesis Entitled Internet Utilization and Academic Activities of Faculty Members in the Universities of kerala: an analytical study. Today, scientific research is throwing up new discoveries, inventions and vistas by the hour. We are witnessing a veritable knowledge explosion. It is important for members of university faculty members to keep abreast of it for giving up-t-date information to their students about the new development in the subject of their study. The internet is an invaluable tool for achieving it. Most of the universities have sufficient internet facility, but the accessibility to all the faculty members is not adequate. University Libraries also provides standard supplementary service in the internet area. This study indicates differential level of awareness and utilization of the internet services by the faculty members in the areas of teaching, research and publication. However the overall impression is that the awareness and utilization is inadequate. This point to the urgent need to devise programs and schemes to promote internet utilization among the faculty members. The suggestions indicate the key areas that deserve attention by policy makers and administrators. Thanks to the internet, every new development in every field of study is just a click away for faculty members, research scholars and students.

Web Presence Of The Engineering College Libraries In Kerala: An Analysis Of Content

Websites of academic institutions are the prime source of information about the institution. Libraries, being the main provider of information for the academics, need to be represented in the respective homepages with due importance. Keeping this in mind, this study is an attempt to understand and analyze the presence and presentation of libraries of Engineering Colleges (EC) in Kerala in their respective websites. On the basis of the reviewed literature and an observation of libraries of nationally important institutions imparting technical education in India, a set of criteria were developed for analyzing the websites/web pages. Based on this an extensive survcy of the websites of ECs were done. The collected data was then analyzed using Microsoft Excel. The library websites were then ranked on the basis of this analysis. It was observed that majority of the websites of ECs in Kerala have least representation of their respective libraries. Another important observation is that even the highest scoring libraries satisfy only half of the criteria listed for analysis.

E-Resources in the Engineering College Libraries of Kerala: Problems towards Sustainable Collection Development

Electronic resources have become a vital part of an academic library especially in universities and higher education institutions. The availability of electronic resources and the acceptance of the fonnat among the academics are rising day by day. As far as engineering students are concerned, they are much techno-savy and are more used to electronic resources. So it has become necessary for the libraries of engineering institutions to subscribe and provide access to electronic resources to satisfy its user community. Many studies have identified that academics are much preferring online journals and databases than their print counter-parts

Marketing of Library Services in an Academic Environment

Marketing of information services is now an important goal of librarians all over the ~orld t? attract mor~ users to the libr~ry. thereby promoting user satisfaction. Marketing IS considered ~s ~n Integr~1 part of libraries and information centres mainly due to the developments In information t.echnology, information explosion, and declining library budgets. Kotler defines marketing as the "analysis, planning, implementation and control o~ carefully formulated programs designed to bring about voluntary exchanges of values WIth target markets fo~ the ~~rpos~ of~chievingorganizational objectives". Organizations suc.h as museums, unrversittes, libraries, and charities need to market their causes and their products to gain. political and social support as well as economic support (Kotler, 1995). In the marketing world people are now migrating from the traditional Four P ~lodelto th~ S~VE mode! (Alt~ns~n, 2013). According to the SAVE model, marketing III an orgarusanon must grve pnonty to 'Solutions' instead of the features or functions of~he.'Product" Similarily it is to focus on 'Access', instead of ,Place'; 'Value' instead of Price" so that the benefits are more stressed, rather than production costs. Instead of :Proliloti.on', marketi~g has. to conc~ntrate on 'Educating' the customers, providing lJlfo~mahol~ about t~eJr specific req~lrements, instead of relying on advertising, public rel~tlons, direct selling etc. From a library point ofview, to ensure maximum utilization of library ~ervices there is an increasing need for definite marketing plans to exploit the techn.ologlcal dcvelop",len~s so ~s to entice the users. By anticipating their changing needs and ~y co.mmulllcatl~g WIth them it should be possible to devise strategies to present various library services and products in a perceptive style.

A study of information-seeking behavior and user perceptions of academic researchers

The purpose of this paper is to examine the information-seeking behavior of science and social science research scholars, including service effectiveness, satisfaction level on different type of sources and various methods adopted by the scholars for keeping up to dateData were gathered using a questionnaire survey of 200, randomly selected, PhD students of science and social science departments of four universities in Kerala, IndiaAlthough similarities exist between social science and science PhD students with regard to information-seeking behavior, there are significant differences as well. There is a significant difference between science and social science scholars on the perception of the adequacy of print journals and database collection which are very relevant to the research purposes. There is no significant difference between science and social science scholars on the perception of the adequacy of e-journals, the most used source for keeping up to date. The study proved that scholars of both the fields are dissatisfied with the effectiveness of the library in keeping them up to date with latest developments