Information Needs and Information Seeking Behaviour of a Tribal Community - A Study on Selected Blocks in West Bengal
Supriya Mallik, Nivedita Bhattacharyya Sahu · Journal of Indian Library Association · 2021
Information is the basic need of life and without it the development of any community is not possible. The present study tries to investigate the information needs of a tribal community, the Lodha community at Senna and Chandana mouza in the Keshiary block and Khamar and Kattara mouza in the Binpur II block in the Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. The said study reveals that the information need and use of information sources differ from place to place. The Lodha people in the said places do not have same type of information need and also, they do not use same type of information resources to satisfy their needs. Though these people have information need they are ignorant about the fact from where they will satisfy their information needs. So, their needs remain as it is and their condition in the society remains the same. After even seventy-two years of independence these people remained illiterate enough and therefore have not experienced the taste of development. The only positive thing is that at least a few people in the community residing in these areas have identified the sources of information and are trying to satisfy their information needs through the sources.