Study of legal information management in High court libraries in India

Abstract

In libraries and Information Centres, information management was mainly related to processing of information resources i.e. acquisition, classification, organization, storage and effective dissemination of information through library services to its clientele. The high court libraries were the main prime source of legal information resources, who maintained the rich collection of various kinds of legal literature. The libraries were extending the library services to law professionals to empower them to make a significant contribution in delivering of justice and equity. ICT has the great impact on library and information centres which allows the quick dissemination of information, wide accessibility and preservation of legal information. The aim of the present research was to study the existing information resources and their management in terms of acquisition, organization, storage, maintenance and dissemination carry out in high court libraries. And also, to study the role of ICT in legal information management in library. The present study was limited to High Court Libraries of India. The Judges libraries, BAR Association libraries and Advocate General libraries were considered for the present study. The present study used survey method which was most suitable for study. The tool for data collection was structured questionnaire. Entire population of all three types of libraries was used. Findings of the study revealed that the annual budget of all three types of high court libraries varies. The outcome of the observation revealed that most of Judges libraries have good range of collection and all three types of libraries subscribed the e-resources which required essentially serving the users. The study also found that there was no uniformity in organization of similar types of resources and libraries organized the resources as per their convenience. It was noted that majority of the libraries under the study still use the card catalogue. Online Public Access Catalogue were mostly used in Judges libraries......