Methodology
Primary data regarding the marketing attitude and practices of CSIR LICs were collected through a detailed mailed questionnaire (see Appendix 1 for a list of the institutions used and Appendix 2 for the questionnaire) along with interviews. According to Nachimias and Nachimias (1998), a typical response rate for personal interview is 95 per cent and for mail surveys it is 20-40 per cent. Questionnaires were designed to study the attitude of CSIR librarians towards different aspects of marketing and find out the marketing practices and planning of CSIR LICs. The respondents were asked to respond on a scale as to their agreement or disagreement with each statement by use of the five-point Likert scale: strongly agree (SA), agree (A), not sure (NS), disagree (D) and strongly disagree (SD). It was found that the more precise the scale, the more clearly will the person whose attitude falls on the continuum from positive to negative be differentiated. The Likert scale was selected for use as not so many judges are required to establish the validity of the items on the Likert scales, and it is not necessary to assign a specific value for each item.
The chief librarians of these LICs were selected as subjects of study. The sample consisted of 41 CSIR libraries and information centres of India. Out of 41, 37 responses were received, of the 37 responses, four were incomplete; 33 responses were found satisfactory for analysis. The final sample amounted to 80.49 per cent of the total population.
Analysis of data and findings
The purpose of the survey was to obtain data on the librarians' attitude about different concepts of marketing, and practices related with marketing. Before each statement, percentages of different types of attitude of total librarians are given. For a better understanding and proper analysis, the data have been displayed in Tables I-III.
The data show the attitude towards need of marketing is positive. The majority of the librarians (46 per cent) disagree with the reluctance found on the part of them. According to 56 per cent librarians, users are not ignored about information products and services, in which 28 per cent of librarians strongly disagree about the users' ignorance. The majority of librarians (21 per cent strongly agree and 23 per cent agree) accept the absence of an accurate method to measure users' needs and demands. Marketing planning can provide an opportunity to assess quality and usage of information products/services according to 91 per cent of librarians. It shows that none of the librarians have a negative attitude, and that all the librarians feel that marketing helps in justifying the involved cost in generation of information products, and aspects such as resource constraints, shrinking budgets, electronic information age have made marketing necessary.
All the librarians accept that marketing, its application and benefits, must be taught in library education and are tending to create the marketing environment in the libraries. All except 2 per cent of librarians are agreed that the conventional approach towards marketing has been for the purpose of promotion only. Only 3 per cent of librarians disagree with the term "users to be 'clients/customers'".
Some of them (31 per cent) accept that use of marketing techniques will put an extra burden on existing library staff and products/services, while most of them (40 per cent) disagree with this. Agreement that ignorance with marketing is responsible for discouraging marketing applications reflects the need of proper training and teaching of marketing applications to librarians. All the librarians agree with "implementing marketing programme requires adequate manpower and financial support", of which 89 per cent strongly agree. No negative response has been found on "use of practice of marketing techniques will eventually eliminate the essential services because they are not as self-supporting as others".
The data show that librarians of these CSIR libraries are quite welcoming to marketing planning and its necessity in the library operations. The need for a mission statement (100 per cent) and monitoring it by users' feed back (100 per cent) are a must. This shows the initiating marketing practices in LICs. Continuous motivated teamwork (99 per cent) and designating professional are desired. Rigorous assessment of internal and external environments is necessary to make decisions is necessary according to all the librarians, of which 72 per cent strongly agree. No negative attitude was found for "planning and executing a marketing programme is considered as an indispensable activity of the library as cataloguing and classification". The majority of the librarians (92 per cent) expect a marketing programme to be able to anticipate any significant change or development in the library information products/services (see Table III).