Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Health Science Library  Professionals in India: A Survey

Prakash; M. Krishnamurthy

doi:10.51983/ajist-2019.9.1.2611

Authors

Prakash Librarian, Sri Devaraj Urs Academy of Higher Education and Research, Kolar, Karnataka, India
M. Krishnamurthy Associate Professor, DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51983/ajist-2019.9.1.2611

Keywords:

Health Science Library, Professionals, Survey

Abstract

The survey method was considered most appropriate for this study because, it measures users background, experience and what they know about knowledge and skills in professional development in enhancing their knowledge in day to day working environment and it is well suited to the research questions taken up for this study. A total of 218 questionnaires were administered personally and 183 dully- filled-in questionnaire for received with response rate of 83.94% and were considered for analysis. The study findings were that 66.67% knew Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), the National Library of Medicine Classification (NLM) with 14.75%.The response “No Answer” with 15.3% connotes these libraries have not classified their collection. Only 3.28% knew Library of Congress Classification though it is not much used in Indian libraries probably the respondents’ knowledge of this would be from their study. The mean and standard deviation are computed and ranks were assigned to each of the Medical databases corresponding to the respective designations. This comparison found MedInd/IndMed ranking is much higher than MEDLINE. So the data has no uniformity and conformity with the content and therefore the ranking are not commensurate with the subject content and wider use of the databases worldwide.

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