PRINT AND DIGITAL INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOR OF TEACHERS OF INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS IN CHENNAI : A GENDER-BASED CASE STUDY

The present study examined the information seeking behaviour of male and female teachers working in the international schools located in Chennai City, Tamilnadu State, India. Descriptive research design was adopted. Well-structured, self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. Out of 500 questionnaires randomly distributed, 300 duly-filled questionnaires were received and included for the analysis. The data was analyzed using SPSS package. The findings of the study reveal that : More male respondents seek general information often and more female respondents seek academic information often ; More female respondents seek information for preparing class notes and writing articles while more male respondents seek information for seminar presentation and general awareness; male respondents are frequent library visitors than the female respondents ; More male respondents spend 1-4 hours per week and more female respondents spend less than one hour per in the library; More male respondents than female respondents read only required things in the library, prefer to search with Google, visit the library for leisure reading and preparing for competitive exams, use the available print resources since few years and borrow the non-available items from wherever available. More female respondents than male respondents take print out / photocopies of required materials, borrow books from library for home, visit library for research work, use the available print resources since many years and purchase the books when they are not available in the school library. More male respondents than female respondents obtain the journals / magazines from library, use their own textbooks and reference books /workbooks /guides / specimen copies as their primary sources of information and use online resources as secondary source of information. More female respondents than male respondents obtained the journals / magazines through online sites, heavily used the textbooks borrowed from the library as the primary source of information and make use of notes and worked out papers as the secondary source of information. More male respondents than female respondents get guidance from senior teachers to learn to use e-resources, need help in the use of e-resources periodically / not at all, coin new words based on their earlier reading while searching, use simple words or phrases in searching, get relevant information from e-resources and search for full text and abstracts while looking for published information. More female respondents than mal respondents get guidance from library staff in the use of e-resources, need help often in the use of electronic resources, coin those keywords that they think at the time of searching, agree that the information obtained from e-resources cover a broad scope of their topics and search for index while looking for published information. More female respondents than male respondents faced technical problems and the problem of choosing appropriate databases in using the electronic resources. While more male respondents are bothered about lack of knowledge, non-availability of required books and e-resources and not proficient in search strategies, more female respondents are worried with lack of institutional support and lack of time. It is suggested to build an inclusive, modern, need based and congenial library to be ready to satisfy the information needs of male and female teachers of varied behaviour and pattern in their information seeking process