Information Needs and Information Seeking Behavior of Agriculture Scientist of the Department of Agriculture in Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Information seeking patterns are consisted to be different among usergroups.This study examines the issues of information needs and seeking patterns of the user group of Agriculture scientist of the department of Agriculture in Sri Lanka.The specific objectives of the study first,to identify the information seeking patterns of the Agriculture scientists. Second, to find out what are the resources they need to use. Third, to find out satisfaction level of the agricultural scientists with the available information of their libraries and suggest the possible solutions to overcome the problems faced/encounter when accessing the required information by the agricultural scientists.A survey was conducted by using structured questionnaire among the all agricultural scientist of the two research institutes of the Agriculture Department.The findings revealed that Agriculture scientist in the category of very weaker competence in relation to use of library and also spend less time in the library of their institutes. Most of the respondents are seek information for their research work. It has reveled that respondents are preferred to used journals when find the information for their research work. The paper conclude that scientist are required proper instruction and programs aiming at improving their information seeking skills. They are facing lot of barriers when used the library in their institutions. It is recommended to librarians that the existing strategies should be re design and re shape to address these problems properly and to improve the information searching skills of agriculture scientist of the department of Agriculture.Also more IT and other facilities should be implemented to the Agriculture Libraries.