The paper aims to assess the level of preparedness of the Central Libraries of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to personalize content and seeks to determine whether the personalization service prototype being developed at IIT Kharagpur can be extrapolated to the remaining IITs.
A questionnaire was sent to the Librarians of the seven IITs, designed to compare the available information resources and services, with special emphasis on user interests and personalization aspects. The survey was supplemented by study visits to a couple of the Institutes.
Kharagpur and Mumbai have implemented personalization services in some form while the remaining IITs plan to adopt them in the near future. There is also a strong case for extending Kharagpur's personalization service, currently in project mode, to the other IITs.
IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur failed to return the questionnaires, so relevant information regarding these Institutes had to be collected from their web sites and other available sources. There is also scope for further research to accurately access the current status of personalization activities in all the IITs.
With parallel interests and similar research and information facilities, personalization services in one IIT can be replicated and utilized by all the others, leading to greatly enhanced library services in all the Institutes.
This one of a kind survey underlines the need for and possibility of making content personalization a reality in advanced technical libraries. The results obtained are valuable to all IIT libraries in particular and academic/technical libraries in general.
