Assessment of Awareness, Usage Patterns, Effectiveness, and User Satisfaction of OPAC among Undergraduate Students of Tirhut College of Agriculture, Dholi

The present paper aims to study the awareness, use, effectiveness and satisfaction of OPAC by undergraduate students of Tirhut College of Agriculture, Dholi, a constituent of Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Bihar. Out of a total of 170 structured questionnaires, 140 were filled out correctly and included for further analysis. It was found that 70.71% of the students who are aware of OPAC access it frequently, usually to check the availability and number of copies of documents. Search behavior demonstrates over-reliance on simple queries (author/title) and under-use of other, more advanced features like putting a hold request or renewing a book. Some key challenges included difficulties with ambiguous searches, a lack of spelling correction, and issues with the system not functioning properly at times. Satisfaction with OPAC is average, 46.43% are satisfied, and 34.28% are neutral. Performance and utilization of OPACs were found to be impacted by multiple factors, indicating that users would benefit from improved training, interfaces, and library support in order to make the most of OPACs at agricultural universities.