User Education and Information Literacy in Agricultural Universities of India

Abstract

Twenty-six of the agricultural universities in India teach user education and information literacy (IL). This article evaluates these courses and investigates if and how the course curriculum blends research and technical writing skills effectively. Unfortunately, the courses lack uniformity in teaching IL and technical writing skills. Since the universities are under state government control, they are unable to provide uniform curricula throughout India. There is also a need for a credited course on IL, integrating ICT and computer skills, and another course for research and technical writing.

Exploring the university research scholars’ information literacy competency: a focus on the knowledge and skills

“…A study conducted by Hartmann (2001) revealed that students required assistance in establishing research processes and strategies and libraries should play a key role in developing literacy skills. A study conducted by Singh (2010) on IL advised to have an exclusive integrated credit course curriculum on use of library resources and retrieval techniques. The author also suggested that the librarians have to stay alert to changes and constantly be willing to change how and what they teach.…”

“…To use the resources available through web, the users need to be educated in the techniques of searching for information. Most of the universities are offering IL as part of the curricula, and the primary reason for offering these courses is to make them information literate and to acquaint them with various sources available in the library (Singh, 2010; Holden, 2012). According to Hartmann (2001), ILS program must be designed to motivate the range of resources and services available to the students to exploit the resources to their full potential.…”

Engaging the Global Community

“…I should emphasize here that CIL's non-native English writing and publishing successes are genuinely noteworthy. As just a few examples, CIL articles written by Skagen et al (2009), Singh (2010, and Mahmood (2016) are well cited and they receive extraordinary download traffic from all corners of the known information literacy universe. Alas, here is the great challenge: As a non-commercial, unsubsidized, library-published journal, CIL does not have the capacity needed to support authors whose manuscripts have significant English language writing issues.…”

Untitled

“…I should emphasize here that CIL's non-native English writing and publishing successes are genuinely noteworthy. As just a few examples, CIL articles written by Skagen et al (2009), Singh (2010), and Mahmood (2016) are well cited and they receive extraordinary download traffic from all corners of the known information literacy universe. Alas, here is the great challenge: As a non-commercial, unsubsidized, library-published journal, CIL does not have the capacity needed to support authors whose manuscripts have significant English language writing issues.…”