Management of electronic resources by management institute in Pune City: a survey

Abstract

PurposeThe present study was conducted to find what practices Pune city's management institutes are following for managing their online databases. Essentially, the purpose of the research was to study librarians' awareness about the life cycle of electronic resources and how to manage their life span, so that the data in use do not go obsolete.Design/methodology/approachThis experimentative study was based on a structured questionnaire designed to discover whether librarians of Pune's management institute followed the recommended six-step process in managing the life cycle of institutes' electronic resources as proposed by Jill Emery and Graham Stone in their Techniques in Electronic Resource Management (TERMS).FindingsOur study revealed that the librarians are not following any fixed protocol and are managing electronic resources in an ad hoc manner as per their own discretion. A majority are not even aware of the six steps the TERMS model prescribed for managing electronic databases.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitation of the study is to find the current practices of management of electronic resources at management institutes / colleges affiliated to Savitiribai Phule Pune University. Institutes which are not subscribing any database other than databases provided by UGC-INFONET thus got excluded from the study.Originality/valueA comprehensive literature review revealed that although such studies have been carried out elsewhere in the world, there is nothing specific to the Indian scenario. This study aims to plug that information gap.