USE OF LEGAL INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES BY THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS OF GOVERNMENT LAW COLLEGE, COIMBATORE, TAMILNADU STATE, INDIA : A STUDY

The present study is undertaken to investigate the use of legal information sources and services by the undergraduate students of Government Law College, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu State, India. It is a descriptive research study which employed questionnaires to collect data from 200 students who are pursing III, IV and V year of undergraduate law courses. The findings of the study reveal that : A majority of 83 students need human rights information and 78 students need academic information. A majority of 62 (93.94%) students know and use textbooks, 50 (75.76%) know and use law books and 49 (74.24%) know and make use of Bye-Laws. Updates of court rules (33, 41.25%) and Statutes (25, 30.12%) are the sources which are not known to most number of IV year students. A majority of them are aware of Internet and legal databases and they make use of such resources. The website of Supreme Court of India is widely known and used among them. A majority of them browse internet, read books/journals, ask faculty members and use mass media to access legal information. Reading books / journals, cyber café, trial and error method and instruction from library staff are the methods used by most of the students to learn to use legal information resources. More than 80% of them know and use JUDIS. Inadequate number of journals, non-availability of latest journals, difficulty in finding relevant information and erratic power supply are the major problems faced by the male students in accessing library resources. A majority of the students want the library to conduct demos of online legal sources by external experts, expect the library to provide more electronic resources and online legal databases and want the library to provide index to law reports and more current legal materials