ICT and Internet Literacy Skills for Accessing to E-Resources available under N-LIST Programme : A Case Study of College Library Users of Barak Valley, South Assam

The present study has been undertaken with a view to know the scenario of N-LIST Programme implementation and status of the ICT and Internet literacy skills amongst the College Library Users who have been mainly drawn from the ten selected college libraries of Barak Valley of South Assam to access E- Resources available under N-LIST Resources. The present work was carried out during January to May 2012. For that purpose, survey method was adopted, which comprises of administration of questionnaire, observation of the participants, and interview of some of the participants for knowing the opinion of the respondents in respect of usage of e-resources available under N-LIST Programme/ services for their academic and research activities. The self designed questionnaire comprising of 19 questions has been distributed amongst the randomly selected 200 samples, out of which 153 respondents have responded. The present investigation is delimited to the randomly selected population of College Library Users who are regularly visiting their respective college library and using the Internet for accessing to the e-resources / web resources available under the N-LIST Programme of INFLIBNET. On the basis of filled up questionnaire received from the respondents, data has been analyzed and tabulated using SPSS Software. For data analysis percentage technique has been adopted. Due to paucity of space important findings have been enumerated in brief. The paper highlights the important survey findings in respect of demographic profiles of college library users, their library visit pattern, e-resources use pattern and expectations of college library users from the N-LIST Programme through which the scholarly contents are made available to the library users. Besides this, some suggestions and recommendations to solve the impediments for non-implementation of N-LIST Programme and under utilization of e-resources have also been enumerated in brief

Comparison between Electronic Resources Usage Pattern among University Libraries at Assam

The convergence of ICT has given rise to the evolution of several new jargons like paperless society, electronic resources, portal/gateway and global digital library. Now-a-days, the academic libraries are not only providing printed resources to their users rather they provide printed as well as electronic resources like e-journals, e-books and databases for fulfilling the day-to-day academic and research requirements of the library users as a result of which the user satisfaction level has been increasing. In 21st century, libraries are moving from print to e-resources either subscribing individually or through consortia. There has been paradigm shift in the collection development policies for acquiring printed as well as e-resources (both offline and on-line resources). This study aims to examine the e-resource usage pattern among the library users in Assam State. Further, it also compares the preference of e-resources usages among university library users

Information Seeking Behaviour of Scientific Community at Assam, India: A Proposed Model for E-Environment

The present study has been undertaken to know the information seeking pattern of the scientific community who belong to different universities under the study. In this study, it has been tried to find out the satisfaction after utilization of print or digital information resources available in the digital environment with a view to understand the situation of the existing library system. After evaluation and observation of the findings of the study critically, it leads to create confusion regarding the nature of information seeking pattern by the scientific community. It is found that the existing library information system is seemed to be less functional. The experience gathered from personal visit, observation and discussion with scientific community by the researcher also has realized that there is a big gap or problem in accessing information from university library system. So, there is an urgent need to develop a model which can fulfill the requirement of scientific community. Thus, one new model of information seeking behaviour is proposed namely “Information Seeking Model for Scientific Community at Assam” (ISMSCA) which might solve the problem of scientific community, if implemented

Efficacy of gefitinib in epidermal growth factor receptor-activating mutation-positive nonsmall cell lung cancer: Does exon 19 deletion differ from exon 21 mutation?

Background: This study was designed to evaluate the differential effect of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status (exon 19 vs. 21) on progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in treatment-naïve advanced EGFR mutation-positive nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with gefitinib as first-line agent. Methods: This was a post hoc analysis of EGFR-mutated (exon 19 and 21) advanced-stage (Stage IIIB or IV), chemotherapy-naive NSCLC patients treated with gefitinib as first line in a phase 3 randomized study. Patients were treated with gefitinib 250 mg daily. Patients underwent axial imaging for response assessment on D42, D84, D126, and subsequently every 2 months till progression. Responding or stable patients were treated until progression or unacceptable toxicity. SPSS was used for statistical analysis. Kaplan–Meier method was used for survival estimation and log-rank test for comparison. Cox proportion hazard model was used for multivariate analysis. Results: One hundred and forty-one patients were eligible for analysis, of which 78 were males and 63 were females. A total of 127 patients (90.1%) were ECOG 0–1 while 14 patients (9.1%) were ECOG >1. Exon 21 mutation was present in 65 patients (46.1%) and exon 19 mutation in 76 patients (53.9%). One hundred and thirty-three of 141 patients were evaluable for response. Response rate of patients having exon 19 mutation was 72.9% (51 patients, n = 70) while it was 55.6% in patients having exon 21 mutation (35 patients, n = 63) (P = 0.046). Median PFS in exon 19-mutated patients was 9.3 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.832–11.768) compared to 7.8 months (95% CI 5.543–10.0) (P = 0.699) in exon 21-mutated patients. The median OS in exon 19-mutated patients was 19.8 months (95% CI 16.8–22.7), and it was 16.5 months (95% CI 10.9–22.1) in exon 21-mutated patients (P = 0.215). Conclusion: There were no differential outcomes in the Indian patients of advanced-stage NSCLC with exon 19 and 21 EGFR mutations treated with gefitinib