Two years after starting research education in Krishna University (KRU), here the whopping 186 research candidates including 150 new comers are yet to have a good library facility and longing for online or offline journals.
Since 2010, the KRU authorities did not make available any journals in respective disciplines to the 36 scholars belonging to the first batch of research candidates, whose research period is likely to be completed with in next few months. “We had to rely on free online web portals for reference or download articles related to our thesis. Most useful according to them was Google’s Scholar portal, which had become the most-sought after source for our guides too,” a few final year scholars told The Hindu .
Fearing likely obstacles in completing their research work, they appealed for anonymity. Since 2010-11 academic year, when the KRU admitted its first batch of research scholars, the university authorities had been putting off subscribing to online and offline journals or buying books. The existing library is yet to be equipped with research-oriented/reference books as there was no special budgetary allocation in this regard between 2010 and 2013.
“We allocated Rs.15 lakh to subscribe to e-journals and printed journals in necessary fields.
We are yet to come out with final list of subscriptions till date,” Krishna University Vice-Chancellor Vunnam Venkaiah told The Hindu and accepted that the library facilities were still poor and needed to be strengthened.
Next few months are very crucial and critical for the first research batch, as tension prevails among them to fulfil their immediate goal of getting their articles published in the national seminars before they submit their thesis for the award of Ph.D.
“Apart from drastic increase in expenditure on the research, we had to deal with psychological pressure in order to be on time,” the final year scholars revealed. For newly admitted 150 Ph.D. and M.Phil. candidates belonging to Science, Management and Humanities departments, the six-month ‘course work’ began on Wednesday, amid poor library facilities.
