University Library Provision and Services in Sierra Leone
Introduction
Harrod’s (2000), described college library as an structured assortment of publications put in a faculty for the use of teachers and pupils, but commonly for pupils. It might comprise textbooks of reference and or publications for property looking through and in the treatment of a specialist librarian, or trainer-librarian. It is variously contact “Tutorial Materials Centre”, “Studying Centre or Media centre.”
The College library serves as a service company which supports the schools’ aims and gives resources for all topics and all desire of pupils and instructors. The school library is a supportive source of the faculty curriculum, its provisions, products and services, and growth is directed at aiding college programmes (Kinnel, 1994).
Libraries frequently have as their key goal attaining, processing, storing and disseminating data to which university library is not an exception. The school library has a crucial role to engage in in the data company. They present supplies appropriate to the curricular demands of most people with the college group. The great importance of providing these kinds of means can not be overemphasized if the faculty library is to be an instigator of and help for resource based mostly discovering in the university.
Also, in relation to information abilities, the library and its librarian, make out there components and solutions in various kinds to enable the two pupils and the university local community to use these capabilities in locating the information they require.
The reason and philosophy of school library services are fast being comprehended and accepted by university administrators and lecturers. The actuality necessitates that the college librarian be carefully acquainted with those people needs these kinds of as assistance, the looking through programme and the enrichment programme for pupils and instructors. On the other hand, Albert Academy library has no properly trained and experienced librarian, who understands and performs all those needs in purchase to assure that the services provision is totally attained.
Albert Academy School Library
The Albert Academy was inaugurated on the 4th Oct 1904. It was right until 1975 when the Albert Academy Alumni Association in their conference believed it sensible that this kind of a trustworthy establishment should not go without a library as the improvement of university libraries was at its highest peak at that time. An strategy to erect a library constructing was born with the collaboration of the alumni association and the owners of the college that is the United Methodist Church. The library was established with the aim of obtaining a location wherever pupils could go and take a look at new ideas to even more bolster their university curriculum things to do and leisure as perfectly.
The library was officially opened to the complete university neighborhood by His Excellency the late Dr. Siaka P. Stevens on 4th Oct 1976, then President of the Republic of Sierra Leone and also a member of the Albert Academy Alumni Association course of 1922. The library was named soon after him subsequent the huge contribution he created in the direction of creating the library for the school neighborhood. The Albert Academy Library has a mission to “Assist school curriculum things to do by furnishing components of relevance in the faculty process and to introduce new and enhanced details sources to enable make the school to be in line with modern requirements of instruction.”
The goals of the Albert Academy college library are as follows:
I. To offer pupils with library elements and providers most correct and most significant in their development and development
ii. To participate totally in college programmes as it strikes to meet up with the desires of pupils, teachers, parents and many others local community associates
iii. to encourage and guideline pupils in all phases of their examining that they may perhaps come across rising pleasure and satisfaction and may mature in important judgment and appreciation
iv. To make out there new advancement and preserve pupils abreast of modern developments in education realize reader’s requires and holding them well educated in purchase to create a properly dynamic educational environment
v. To perform with the teacher in the selection and generation of educational materials that meet the aims of the curriculum, offer you direction in the use of assortment, evaluation of instruction programmes and resources, facilitates the locale, organisation and routine maintenance of products proficiently and
vi. To enable pupils to turn out to be experienced end users of libraries and of printed and audio-visual components.
Library Provision at Albert Academy College Library
A key position in the facts provider supplied by modern day university library is in the provision of components applicable to the curricular requires of pupils and teachers. In latest a long time, the curriculum things to do have moved to a further stage, where by the college getting supportive resource of this movement, must endeavor to dwelling a selection of print and non-print products and have accessibility the place attainable to digital resources of facts which are also part of the details assets in the library.
Supplied the requires of the modern day school curriculum, the college library ought to now residence a huge selection of print and non-print supplies and have obtain, the place achievable, to digital sources of information and facts. The Albert Academy University delivers printed resources, guide, fiction and non-fiction as properly as pamphlets, newspapers, chart, shots, monographs, manuals, handbooks, textbooks and other reference guides the library also provides non-textbooks components which contain audio and audio-visual supplies, slides, tape-slides, online video cassettes, and CD ROM’s. Although these are not resources in the standard sense, they even now constitute resources for use by pupils and teachers. Use of electronic resources enable university libraries to present pupils and academics with a idea of a School Details Centre which is not continued to the college but is a website link to an never-ending supply of information (Herring, 1988).
Albert Academy College Library Solutions
The function of creating Albert Academy School Library is to deliver services for equally pupils and academics in a bid to satisfy one of its major purposes, which is to aid curriculum ambitions by supplying products and services that are indispensably linked to the fulfillment of this intent.
A person of the principal services of the Albert Academy School library is to act as back again-up to the underneath resourced school programme. Even highly developed nations around the world simply cannot conveniently inventory supplies ranging from 5 thousand (5,000) to twenty thousand (20,000) in a small room to offer assist to college programmes. As a result, they see the have to have for central inventory of elements which can be borrowed for differing lengths of time (lending provider) and also for looking at and session companies. This is finished in purchase to increase the faculty curriculum at the Albert Academy which is inclusive of the Primary Sciences and Know-how, Social Sciences, Humanities and the Good Arts.
Albert Academy Faculty library also provides inter-library financial loan expert services requests. This is specially worthwhile to senior pupils finding out topics across subjects offered in depth. Pupils who can not pay for to order or access these high priced elements benefit from this sort of library support. Through inter-library mortgage products and services, products are sourced from other universities libraries for the gain of both of those pupils and lecturers.
A reference service is also presented at Albert Academy University library. The School Librarians expend a sizeable proportion of their time giving what in other libraries phrase would be termed as reference service. In furnishing a reference company, school Librarians complete a identical purpose to that of other librarians. In a reference job interview in faculty, each pupil is dealt with as important as the other and presented the Librarian’s total consideration. This is accomplished by individual help presented to the pupils and teachers in discovering certain information and facts irrespective of whether immediate or indirect. Some of the reference elements at the Albert Academy College Library are dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, yearbooks, biographies newspapers, maps and charts, and the tutorial and administrative calendar of events or the procedure of the faculty.
1 of the most useful companies presented by Albert Academy University library is that of information and facts provision. The Albert Academy Faculty library retains the academics and pupils educated about new educational assets and development in the fields of desire to them by displaying the jackets of publications that just arrived. The Albert Academy College library utilizes Present-day Recognition Products and services (CAS) to realize this target. This is accomplished by figuring out the data requires of both equally instructors and pupils and assembly these requirements. Connected to the CAS is the Selective Dissemination of Info (SDI) and this is additional unique with instructors. This ranges from keeping person lecturers educated about new resources in the library or about newly released supplies, to alerting academics to conferences and program needs or celebration linked to their curricular fascination.
Worries of Library Provision and Companies at the Albert Academy Faculty Library
No subject what an organisation has to count as achievement, is bound to confront selected problems that stand prior to it as troubles to its success. College Libraries in Sierra Leone, specifically Albert Academy University Library are not without worries.
To start out with the library and its means have been disregarded by the pupils and teachers. Even with their all-essential character of provider provision in assist to them they do not see it as a useful portion of their routines. This is because most lecturers and pupils do not get enough supply of textbooks and other components directly linked to the curriculum programme and most instructors get ready pamphlets for sale to pupils from which there teaching is based mostly. This has brought about most of the pupils to closely rely on those resources as an alternative of the library sources.
The School Library has a staffing challenge. For case in point the Albert Academy College Library has no specialist library team to take care of an info company for about two thousand pupils and teachers.
Additionally, the library has a obstacle with area. The space provided for the library from inception is now not more than enough for the faculty. The university populace in phrases of lecturers and pupils has developed comparatively higher to over two thousand (2000) pupils and personnel as as opposed to the house offered for a very little in excess of 5 hundred (500) pupils and workers about 40 yrs ago. It has turn out to be hard to entry the library and its sources.
In addition, there is a funding problem. The Albert Academy School Library is confronted with the difficultly of securing cash from the colleges authorities for an efficient assortment development. The library relies upon greatly on donations and items to stock its assortment and most of these elements offered in this guise are not reflective of the classes made available in the university curriculum. Usually, the college administration has to unfold meager economic assets across a wide spectrum of faculty needs.
The institution of the laptop laboratory with slight world-wide-web facilities unbiased of the university library has also developed a dilemma for the Albert Academy School Library. The academics and pupils would choose to stop by the Computer system centre for World-wide-web companies significantly a lot more that traveling to the library. The separation of the Web services from the library companies has posed a really serious danger to the library provision and services.
Also, it is really demonstrated that the Albert Academy Faculty Library lacks the capacity to give for the visually impaired or handicapped. The absence of college library supplies in the Braille structure prevents blind and the partly sighted pupils to make the most of the accessible library methods in their faculties libraries.
Closing, the issue of preservation of library products is not a widespread observe for the Albert Academy University. This preservation is meant to assure that the products previous extensive because of their regular use. It has grow to be hard to entry resources to protect elements that are underneath risk of sporting out through constant use.
In spite of some gloomy predictions on the long run funding of education and learning and feasible restrictions on the availability of means at the Albert Academy School Library, the foreseeable future of the university library looks assured. It can be argued that simply because of recent educational and technological developments, there has in no way been a increased will need for very well-resourced and skillfully staffed college library than it is now. The emphasis on the individual’s-the child’s and the adult’s-capability to discover and use details successfully is possible to continue in educational facilities, at get the job done and for leisure pursuits. A upcoming society dependent on digital details for its prosperity will need to have an information curriculum in its universities. Therefore the availability of very good college library provision and companies in the faculty curriculum cannot be overemphasised (Kargbo, 2000).
