A Study on Information Needs and Information Seeking Behaviour of Rural Population with Special Reference to Barak Valley, South Assam (North East India) : A Survey

The present study was undertaken with a view to know the basic information needs and status of Information Seeking Behavior of rural population of Barak Valley which comprises of students, teachers, farmers, businessmen, etc. The respondents of the present study are mainly drawn from the rural areas of three districts of Barak Valley where the majority of the people are not highly qualified and the literacy level is comparatively lesser in majority of respondents. For that purpose, survey method of research has been adopted by the investigators using schedule as one of the data collection tool which has been supplemented by other tools like observation and interviews of the respondents to know the actual state of affairs pertaining to seeking right kind of information at right time. The self-designed schedule consisting of 22 questions has been distributed amongst the randomly selected samples. The schedules were distributed amongst the 300 samples, out of which 215 respondents have responded. The filled up schedules were collected from the respondents for data analysis and interpretations. On the basis of filled up schedule the data has been analysed and tabulated using MS-Excel Software. For data analysis percentage technique has been adopted. The study shows that the awareness about the rural/public library was more among the respondents