BUILDING INFORMATION-RESILIENT COMMUNITIES THROUGH PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND COMMUNITY INFORMATION CENTRES: A STUDY OF RAIGARH, CHHATTISGARH

Vollständiger Abstract

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Reliable information has become essential for education, employment, health, government services, digital participation and informed decision-making. Public libraries and Community Information Centres (CICs) can strengthen communities by providing access to information, digital facilities, guidance and locally useful services. The present study examined the relationship between Library and Community Information Centre support and information resilience among respondents in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh. The analysis used the supplied dataset of 100 respondents, including 50 rural and 50 urban respondents and an equal number of male and female respondents. Information resilience was represented through six dimensions: information access, credibility evaluation, digital information skills, emergency information access, social trust and connection, and service navigation. Descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-test, Pearson's correlation and simple linear regression were used. The mean Library and CIC Support Score was 37.09 (SD = 6.69), while the mean Overall Information Resilience Score was 118.66 (SD = 15.35). Forty-nine percent of respondents had high information resilience and 50% had moderate information resilience. Urban respondents reported significantly higher Library and CIC Support Scores than rural respondents, t(98) = 2.34, p = .021. However, the rural-urban difference in overall information resilience was not statistically significant, t(98) = 1.63, p = .107. Library and CIC support had a very strong positive relationship with overall information resilience (r = .942, p < .001). Regression analysis showed that support scores accounted for 88.8% of the variation in information resilience within the dataset. The study concludes that stronger library and community information support is closely associated with greater capacity to access, evaluate and use information and recommends stronger rural access, digital services, information-literacy programmes and local service navigation support in Raigarh.