The fast growth of information and communication technology and particularly the Internet has changed traditional methods of research, storage, retrieval, and communication of information. Internet has emerged as the most powerful medium for storage and retrieval of information. The Internet facility has enabled teachers and students to enhance their academic excellence by providing them the latest information and access to worldwide information. The present study highlights the existing situation of Internet services provided by the various departments of Alagappa University. The study shows that female respondents constitute more in number than male respondents, corroborating the greater number of women in higher education in Tamil Nadu state. It also reveals that most respondents (56.76%) use the Internet for educational purposes, while 36.49% use online services for research purposes.
TopLiterature Review
Parameshwar and Patil’s (2009) paper finds that a large portion of user population in the university is aware of the internet, but does not know all its techniques and applications. Further, a few users of the university still have no knowledge about the internet and related applications. For this purpose, there is need for effective use education, to develop awareness and knowledge of the users. More efforts by librarian at Gulbarga University are needed to education users to effectively use the internet and its techniques and applications.
Agarwal and Dave (2009) studied internet use by the scientists and research fellows of Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI) in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, which was assessed on the basis of the results of a questionnaire created by CAZRI. Further, it also attempts to assess the frequency of use, location where used, search engine accessed, purpose for using the net, etc. The study revealed that respondents accessed Google search frequently (100%), followed by Yahoo (85.29%). It is also observed that 97.06% respondents use the Internet for education and research. The strong desire of respondents is that CAZRI’s library expand its services to include e-portals, online information services, and abstracts retrieval.
Biradar et al. (2008) reported the results of a study exploring University students’ and teachers’ use of search engines for retrieving scholarly information. The main objectives were to examine the use of various search engines, factors influencing choice of search engine, use of search strategies for information retrieval, and also to learn the strategies used by students and faculties in the university environment. The results of their study show that 100% of students and 97.91% of faculty use search engines for finding information on the internet. Google and Yahoo received the highest overall ratings. The study also showed that the majority of the respondents receive help from friends and use the help features of search engines to learn search strategy.