Usage of e-Theses in Agricultural Libraries of Northern India

Abstract

The study has been conducted with a purpose to see the availability of e-theses collections across agricultural libraries of northern India; work out the proportion of users for each of the e-theses collection and make an assessment about the satisfaction level of users about availability and adequacy of e-theses. Seven sampled universities were surveyed personally by the investigator for collecting data about the questions under investigation. A questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. The investigator also availed of the telephonic & e-mail communication and had a face to face interaction with respondents to collect prompt response, substantiate the responses and remove ambiguities thereof. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to make an analysis of the data on an empirical basis. Chi-Squared (?2) Test has been used to derive association between the variables and test the level of significance. The agricultural libraries of northern India are not seen to subscribe to any e-theses collection of international coverage and all seem to rely on 'KrishiPrabha', the free of cost Indian Agricultural Doctoral Dissertations Repository. Only SKUAST-K and CSKHPKV have developed their institutional repositories; whereas it is only SKUAST-K & SKUAST-J which participated in a state level e-theses initiative. The set of freely available etheses under investigation are not used to a desirable magnitude as only KrishiPrabha is used by a maximum number of users (42.08%) and 30.10% do not use any of them at all. Majority of users (53.10%) use a single e-theses collection, while only 16.80% use a combination of more than one e-theses collection to meet their requirement. Though the majority of respondents (60.33%) are satisfied with the availability & adequacy of e-theses collections; the level of their satisfaction in this regard is below the moderate level (x=3.54).