Information seeking skills among users of agricultural libraries of northern India in electronic era

The purpose of the study has been to explore whether users of north Indian agricultural libraries prefer to search the information through simple or advanced search technique; make an assessment of the familiarity of different advanced search techniques and identify the source from which the users have learnt to make use of advanced search techniques. The investigator made a personal survey of seven sampled universities for collecting data about the questions under investigation and 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 analysis of the data on empirical basis. Chi Squared (?2) Test was used to derive association between the variables and test the level of significance. It is found that the majority of users prefer to search the information through ‘simple search technique’. They are either unaware about or incompetent to use advanced search techniques, as only one advanced search technique i.e. ‘Boolean Operators (AND/OR/NOT)’, is seen to be used by 58.75% of users. The majority of respondents learns to use e-resources through self study or from colleagues/classmates and do not rely much on the library staff (11.58%).