Page 72 - DLIS102_LIBRARY_AND_ITS_USERS

Unit 11: User Education

tools, publications and guidelines. The ‘UNISIST Guide for Teachers‘ and the ‘Guidelines for Notes
Developing and Implementing a National Plan for Training in information use‘, are the two vary
useful publications.
Several countries, particularly USA and UK, have made organized efforts in promoting programme
for educating and training information users and extensive literature in the field is available to
guide the formulation of such programmes in India.
Libraries provide a support service to the institutions they serve. It is important to understand the
goals of the institution served to enable librarians to come up with a mission statement which should
reflect the library’s commitment in helping the institution achieve its goals. Thorough planning is
needed to ensure that all activities carried out are towards meeting the institutional goals.
Commitment to educate users should be reflected in the mission statement of the library. This should
be followed by a written user education policy.
User education programmes should aim to make all users aware of the information resources
available, both directly in the library and from external sources and enable users to enjoy the search
for information. It is interesting to note that many of the objectives listed by libraries in this study
stressed the self sufficiency of users through a successful user education programme. Written policies
and objectives on user education provide a basis for self-evaluation. This could be used to answer
questions like, is the user education programme achieving what it was set out to achieve? If not
more detailed studies on user information needs should be conducted. User education programmes
need continuous revision to keep up to date with the changing information environment. Written
objectives for instruction should be derived from the written profiles of the information needs of
the users. Universities have unique identities “each university library must design its own course
to meet the immediate needs of its clientele as well as fit into the university teaching programme”.
This is evident in the responses; some libraries’ concern is introducing first year students to the
library “some of whom have never used a library before”.

Some specific components of user education are:

• Librarians introducing new students, some of who come from school systems where there are
generally no school librarians or well established libraries, to the complexities of university
library facilities.
• Librarians familiarizing users, who have little or no information seeking skills at all with a
broad range of library resources in order to develop library skills.
• Librarians educating users on how to find materials manually or electronically using on-line
public access catalogues and CD-ROMs.

It is generally agreed that there are three levels of user education:
The library orientation is to be given at the beginning of every academic year or semester it should be
applicable to all those who are using the library for the first time.
• The second stage, i.e., subject oriented instruction for undergraduates at a stage when they
are admitted to a special branch or subject of their choice or at the time of project work.
• Literature search training should be provided at the beginning of their research work.’ The
literature search is specified as being for post-graduate students but with students developing
as self-guided independent learners there is no reason why this should be the case. Depending
on the student, the course, and the assignment there may be some overlap between the three
stages.
Knowing which level of user education is required by a particular group of students enables the
librarian to determine the aims and objectives of the session.

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