A STUDY ON LIBRARY USE BY CHENNAI MEDICAL COLLEGE HOSPITAL AND RESEARCH CENTRE STUDENTS AND FACULTIES AT TRICHY

Information is all around us and is the staple diet of human beings. Information is variously perceived as facts, intelligence, data, news and knowledge. Information has been a common ingredient to all areas of human endeavour, be it the day to day affairs of business, matters of life and death or the most trivial pursuits. In a modern industrial society there are negligibly few individuals, who do not, from time to time, occasionally/frequently have any requirement of information. It is an essential accompaniment of almost every social activity. Information is considered as important that contributes towards the development of a nation. It provides the core for the development of knowledge, the basis for innovations, the resources for informed citizenry and as a result become a key commodity for the progress of a society. Members of a society acquire the needed information from a variety of sources. However several of these sources are expensive, complex or difficult for individuals to acquire and use. Therefore, the role of libraries becomes vital in meeting the information needs of individuals in the society. Libraries develop their collections, facilities and services to meet the information needs of their patrons. A health or medical library is designed to assist physicians, health professionals, students, patients, consumers and medical researchers to improve, update, access or evaluate health care. The library is the most preferred source of information for gathering information for the medical students and the teaching faculties. Teachers, laboratories, and libraries are important components in providing effective medical education. The main purpose of medical library is to support medical education, including teaching, research and patient – care. Just as a healthy brain is essential for a healthy human being, a healthy library is an asset for promotion and advancement of health science in health education. In medical libraries, the latest technologies are increasingly used to collect, store, retrieve and disseminate a great amount of information to help medical professionals in their day-to-day education, research and clinical practices. The medical websites and database developed by medical institutions, associations, agencies, and publishers provide the latest information. In a developing country like India, medical professionals are quite aware of the new technologies used by their counterparts in the developed nations. Despite of enormous money spent for library and information sciences