USE OF THE INTERNET FOR READING: A CASE STUDY OF PUNJABI UNIVERSITY, PATIALA

The advent of computers and the Information communication Technologies (ICT) has revolutionized the way of access and use of information. It has even brought a great change in information storage, handling and retrieval. The entire universe has converged into a global village. The libraries which are the highly trusted and a valued resources are also undergoing transitions from traditional to hybrid, hybrid to digital and digital to virtual libraries. With this changing scenario, library users as well as their information needs are also changing. The informed citizenry has resulted is an informed and cautious users who are well aware of their information needs. The reading style and habits are also changing in this tech savvy era. Those days are gone when users used to depend on their physical visits to the libraries. The digital and virtual libraries have brought the entire information at their computer/laptop/mobile's screen. The emergence of electronic publishing has revolutionised the information seeking activities of the end users. Young users are relying more on electronic resources to quench their information thirst. Technological revolution has resulted in saving the precious and valuable time of the users, solving the storage problem and facilitates the information sharing and transfer.