Digital Library as a Learning Hub: A Survey among Research Scholars of National Institute of Technology, Calicut

Advent of electronic resources has made a great impact in learning process. Due to the fast access to information, nowadays everyone is preferring e-resources. The concept of a library had changed from a storehouse of information to a dissemination centre of information. Here, digital libraries have started to play a keen role. Today, almost all libraries have digital libraries for storing, processing and disseminating the information. This study is focused to analyse how the research scholars of National Institute of Technology Calicut make use of Nalanda digital library for their learning and research purpose. Online questionnaire method is used for the study. The analysis indicates that the majority of researchers (64.38%) are moderately familiar with e-resources available in their digital library and mostly used e-resources are e-journals (49.32%). Most researchers (69.86%) use e-resources regularly for research and academic work purposes. The key reasons behind the use of e-resources are easy access to information and the availability of needed information. Majority of the researchers (57.53%) are accessing these resources from their department libraries/labs and they opined that information from these e-resources will never be a substitute for a library. Among the respondents, majority (49.32%) are satisfied with the digital library resources.