Information seeking behaviour of agricultural scientists with particular reference to their information seeking strategies

Abstract

The paper is an outcome of the research study conducted by the authors on information seeking behaviour of agricultural scientists working in the ICAR institutions of Delhi and Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. Data has been collected through the structured questionnaire and analyzed with the help of latest version of MS-Excel for appropriate statistical procedures for the description (i.e., frequencies, percentage, means, and standard deviations, etc). Study discusses the findings of various strategies and procedures adopted by the agriculture scientists in meeting their information requirements. The agriculture scientists were asked to ranks the information sources in on the basis of I, II, and III in the order of priority. The survey result shows that agriculture scientists have expressed great dependence in meeting their information requirements on their institutional library/information centre. The Library/Information Centre is the most preferred source (72.05%) of the respondents for all categories of agriculture scientists. On the other hand for accessing information, agriculture scientists highly depend on the library collection, followed by the personal collection, collection of their supervisor and of their colleagues.