Information Use Pattern of Pharmacy Faculty Members in Andhra Pradesh: A Study

Abstract

This article attempts a critical study of the information use pattern of the faculty members in pharmaceutical sciences, working in various institutions, affiliated to the Acharya Nagarjuna University, the Andhra University and the Kakatiya University in Andhra Pradesh. A comprehensive questionnaire to elicit responses on a wide range of issues was circulated among 700 pharmacy faculty members, out of which 545 faculty members responded by submitting filled-in questionnaires and the overall response rate is 78%. The result of the study reveals that the faculty members of the pharmacy department are heavily using the reprographic and borrowing facility compared with other services. The pharmacy faculty members are mainly collecting and seeking information for the purposes of setting up the question papers and exams-related work and also for writing and publishing books and articles compared with other purposes. They highly depend on library catalogues for getting relevant references for their requirements compared with other bibliographical sources. The faculty members are placing more importance on books for their teaching than for research. Periodicals, abstracting and indexing periodicals and theses/dissertations are of importance for their research than their teaching.